The Gravity of Love
by KissThis
Summary: A compilation of Harry x Hermione oneshot fics. An ongoing project. NOTE: each chapter should be considered a separate story, with no connections to any other chapter. PG13 for certain chapters.
1. Bloody Handprints

Gravity of Love : Archives

Title: Bloody Handprints

Author: KissThis

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Rating: PG-13; just for language.

Setting: About two and a half years post-Hogwarts.  Harry and Hermione's home.

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Disclaimer: I own nothing but the actually story itself.  All characters and all things Harry Potter are owned by JK Rowling.

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A/N:  This is part of a compilation of COMPLETELY separate one-shot Harry x Hermione fanfics.  So, PLEASE, do **not** review saying how much you can't wait to see what happens next.  This story is DONE. 

            "Harry, dear.  We're out of milk."

            Hermione's voice echoed from the kitchen into the bedroom.  The refrigerator door slammed shut and the soft whisper of slippered footsteps across the wooden hallway grew louder as she approached the open doorway.  She peeked around the doorframe, her thick and rather bushy curls falling over her shoulders.

            Did you hear me, Harry?" She asked, somewhat tentatively.

            Harry looked up from the rumpled parchment he'd been scribbling on.  The messy lines he'd written glistened wetly in the shine of the overhead candles.  Seeing his wife of a year and a half hovering uncertainly outside the door of their bedroom made him smile.  He dropped his quill and stood up.  The chair grated against the wood as it was pushed back.

            "I didn't interrupt anything important, did I?" She asked.  Her tone was nearly apologetic.

            Harry grinned boyishly down at her, having a height advantage of several inches.  She returned the gesture with her own soft smile.  Her smile had been one of the first things that had drawn Harry to her in the first place.  It was pure and earthy and simple.  No hidden meanings – just a kind and caring smile that filled you up inside and made you want to smile in return.

            "You," He said, brushing the curls from her cheek.  "Are a welcomed distraction."

            Hermione blushed.  She had to stand on her tip-toes to kiss his cheek, but she didn't seem to mind.  A loud gurgle bounded off the hallway walls.  Hermione stepped into the room, bouncing a happily drooling baby on her hip.

            "Oy! 'Ello!" Harry exclaimed, his face lighting up at the sight of his son. 

The lines of stress that seemed to perpetually crease his forehead melted away and the bright, happy spark was back in his emerald eyes.  He looked as youthful and carefree as when Hermione had first seen him, that fateful day on the Hogwarts Express all those years ago.

            But these joyous moments with his family were much too normal for the "great Harry Potter" and just as few and far between.  Nothing better than being wanted dead to age a person prematurely.

            "Who do we have here?" He chuckled, pulling his son into his arms. 

Hermione relinquished him easily and wrapped her now empty arms about her waist.  Harry wiggled his fingers into his son's plump tummy.  The baby giggled loudly.  It squirmed in Harry's arms, plastic diaper crinkling.  More drool dribbled down his chin.

"Right, Sirius," Hermione tuttered, pulling an off-white rag from the pocket of her jeans.  She used it to wipe her son's face clean.  "It won't do if you get spittle all over Daddy."

Harry chuckled, "Let 'im be Hermione."

He lifted Sirius high in the air and brought him back down, resulting in incoherent babblings and high-pitched giggles.  Hermione gave a wide smile as Harry spun their child around in a circle making ridiculous airplane noises.  Sirius hiccupped loudly as his airplane ride reached its conclusion then resumed his giggling with fervor.  As giggles died to wet chortles, Harry hitched his son higher in his arms and turned his gaze to Hermione.  Small, chubby fingers wrapped around a raven lock of hair and held fast.

"He's a free spirit," Harry chuckled.  "Just like Sirius."

They both gazed fondly at the small child, before Harry broke the silence.  "Does he always drool this much?"

Laughter fell from Hermione's coral colored lips and she lifted a hand to her mouth to stifle it.  It was an empty gesture.

"Yes, he does," She answered after allowing herself a moment of amusement.  "Just like his father."

Harry did not miss the quick wink or the jesting tone in her voice.  He pouted and Hermione was suddenly taken aback by the acute resemblance between father and son.  It wasn't as if their uncanny similarities were fresh news to her.  Rather, it felt to Hermione as if she'd never _really_ noticed it before.

Sirius hair, while hopeful wisps of coffee brown at birth, was already darkening to match Harry's ebony crop, and was just as unruly.  The soft wavy curls, practically the only sign of Hermione's genetics, had a mind of their own.  Most days, Hermione just opted to leave them well enough alone.  Harry had never seemed to have a problem with it when _they_ were kids.  In fact, she'd always found his rugged boyishness attractive.  Sirius was staring at her with wide emerald eyes, Harry's genetics prevailing again, as his father wiped the spit from his chin with the tail of his tie.

"Harry!" She exclaimed.  She smacked his hand sharply and gave him a reproachful look.  He just chuckled as she fussed with his tie.

She sighed, "Look what you've gone and done.  This tie is ruined." She said matter-of-factly.

Harry rolled his eyes, "It's hardly ruined."

Hermione snorted and gave him her patented 'shows-how-much-you-know' look.  For some odd reason Harry felt as if he really should have read _Hogwarts: A History_.

"Drool and silk are two very non-mixy things."

Her fingers were quickly working at the knot he'd slid down to half-mast.  Harry continued to be nonplussed, "So I'll just have to get a new one, now won't I?"

She frowned up at him, pulling the silk tie from his neck.  "That's not the point."

Harry grabbed both her wrists in one hand, effectively stopping her menstruations.  Hermione flushed.  Her fingers convulsed reflexively on the crumpled ball of silk in her hand.  He pulled her body close and slowly released her wrists.  Now pinned between their chests, Hermione's hands found no other course than to grab fistfuls of his white dress shirt.  She tilted her chin upwards, her long mahogany lashes dropping over her honey toned eyes.  Harry's hand was firm and comforting on the small of her back.  He ducked his head down, lips just grazing hers.  Hermione's eyes fluttered open to meet the love-filled gaze of her husband.  She gave a short heady laugh, her warm breath caressing his cheeks, and licked her lips before pulling away.

"I need to put Sirius down for his nap," She whispered sounding nearly breathless.

A warm smile touched his lips and he looked at the tiny child now dozing in the crook of his arm.  One chubby arm was still stretched out, fingers tangled in his hair.

With gentle arms Hermione lifted the small Sirius from his perch, effortlessly extricating his tiny hand from her husband's hair.  Harry observed the pair with unbridled pride and unmatched love.  He watched the woman he loved carefully brush the bangs from their son's closed eyes.  The melody of a song he couldn't quite place echoed in his ears as she hummed in time to the soothing rocking of the child in her arms.

She looked up at him suddenly, starling him.  A warm glow rose in her cheeks and candlelight danced in her eyes.  "Are you sure I didn't disrupt anything?"

She glanced over at his desk.  Amidst the clutter of odds 'n ends, staggered piles of books, and a stack of rolled parchments the paper Harry had been working on sat unobtrusively in the center.  It was void of any writing; secret business and all that.

Harry didn't look.  "Absolutely sure.  I know that I've been kept busy with all this stuff for the Order, but I want you to know..." He trailed the backs of his fingers along her cheek.  Hermione tilted her head towards the caress, "...I _always_ have time for you.  _And_ Sirius."

"But Voldemort—"

"Thinks I'm dead," He finished for her.  "We're safe.  _Together_."

Hermione lingered a moment longer before retiring into the adjoining room; once a storage area, now Sirius' nursery.

With the quiet sound of Hermione's singing drifting from the half-open doorway, Harry set about tidying their bedroom.  With a wave of his wand the mess littering the desk began putting itself away in various drawers and cabinets.  Another wave and the heavy draperies slid shut against the blaring afternoon sun.  The chandelier that hung from the ceiling's center was lit with no more than a flick of the wrist.  It was followed by the candelabras that flanked each side of the grand canopy bed.

He turned at the sound of footsteps and watched Hermione backing slowly out of the nursery.  She closed the door softly being her, easing the handle in place to make as little noise as possible.  When she turned around to see the room's altered state she froze.

"Harry?" She voiced, perplexed.

He crossed the room to her side.  Strong arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her towards the bed.  The light filtering down from the crystal chandelier highlighted her cheeks catching the pink flush.

"What are you up to?" She demanded beaming up at him.

He smirked and scooped her up into his arms.  She squealed in surprise.  Kicking her legs in delight she grabbed fistfuls of his shirt to make sure she didn't fall.

"Well, Sirius is taking a nap..." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.  Hermione laughed.  "...it seemed like good advice."

He laid her down upon the bed, chocolate curls fanning about her head.  The loose-knit sweater she was wearing slid down off her shoulders, baring the graceful curve of her neck, elegant collar bone, and sun-kissed skin.  The navy cloth stood out brightly in a sea of white sheets.

She lifted her arms to pull him down beside her and the jumper slid up baring the toned flesh of her stomach.  Harry wiggled his fingers across the exposed skin, and Hermione squirmed as he tickled her.  Her delighted laughter faded to a soft smile as he replaced his fingers with his mouth and pulled the covers over them both.

            The phone was ringing.

            "Harry! Get the telephone – it's probably Ron."

            Harry obliged, digging through the clutter upon his desk to find the buried telephone.  "'Ello?" he said quickly, hoping to catch the caller before they hung up.

            There was no reply.

            Harry pushed his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose, "Hello?" He repeated.  The dead tone resounded in his ear.  He lowered the phone and stared at it cautiously.

            "Who was it, dear?" Came Hermione's voice from some distant part of the house.  Harry shrugged.

            "I dunno. They hung up." He said simply.

            "That's it.  Tomorrow you're moving that phone to where you can actually reach it in time."

            Harry chuckled and set the phone back down.  No sooner had he done so than it began to ring again.  It vibrated slightly and started sliding sideways across the stack of parchment.  He picked it up before Hermione could ask.

            "Hello?" He asked slowly.

            "HARRY?"

            Harry held the phone away from his ear.  A grin was tugging at his lips, "Ron.  There's no need to shout, remember?"

            Harry could almost see his best friend's face turning as red as his hair.

            "Sorry mate," Ron apologized in a normal voice.

            Harry leaned back in his chair.  The phone was cradled between his jaw and shoulder.  "Hey, Ron?"

            "Yeah?"

            "Was that you calling just a moment ago?"

            "_Probably_!" The red-head exclaimed in exasperation.  "You know I can never figure out these bloody contraptions!"

            Harry had to laugh.  For all his good points, and there were many, Ron was completely hopeless when it came to anything Muggle.  He and Hermione had given their friend a cell phone for his birthday last month, and he had yet to truly master the finer mechanics.

            "Practice makes _pre_fect," Harry muttered, to which Ron chuckled.  "So why did you call?"

            "Oh! Right.  Well I just got off from my shift at the Ministry and was wondering if I could swing by for a visit."

            "Is that Ron?" Hermione called.

            Harry covered the mouthpiece and replied in the affirmative, "He wants to stop by."

            "We'd love for you to come," Hermione's voice was slightly crackly in Harry's ear.  She'd picked up the kitchen phone.

            "Hullo, 'Mione."

            "Hello, Ron." Hermione replied warmly.

            "I'm bloody starving.  Any chance of getting a spot of dinner? I know you 'n Harry eat late."

            "Sure," Harry said.  "Hermione just started dinner.

            "Maybe I should just pick something up on the way," he teased.

            Hermione huffed into the phone, "Really, Ron.  My cooking isn't _that_ bad."

            Ron was guffawing loudly.  Harry shook his head with a smile listening to the two friends quarrel much like when they were children.

            "There'll be no dessert for you, Ronald Weasley, if you keep that up." He heard his wife say.

            "Now _that_...I won't allow," was Ron's immediate reply.  "You always did make the best desserts, 'Mione."

            Hermione snorted, but Harry knew she was beaming at the compliment, "Well you should have thought of that _before_ you insulted my culinary skills."

            "How can I make it up to you?"

            "Pick up some milk on your way and I'll _consider_ giving you a brownie."

            Ron chuckled and agreed.

            "One gallon of whole milk, one quart of skim, two cans of condensed milk, and half a pint of 'half and half'.  Oh, and make sure you grab one from the back because the ones in the front are spoiled." She said in a rush.

            Both men laughed.  Harry's died away as an all too common aroma reached his senses.

            "Hermione...what's that smell?"

            He heard her curse and the kitchen phone click off.  Ron was laughing harder than before.  Harry tipped back his chair to look down the hallway.  Thick, gray smoke was spilling from the kitchen.  He got up from his chair and went to close the nursery doors.

            "What happened?" Ron chuckled.

            "She burned the chicken," Harry replied.

            "Do you want me to pick something up from the market?"

            Harry sighed and rubbed his forehead, "Thanks, Ron."

            "Harry!" Hermione called despairingly form the kitchen, "I don't understand.  I didn't do anything wrong this time!"

            Harry leaned against the doorframe, still holding the phone to his ear.  "Did you follow the cookbook _exactly_?"

            "Of course," she shot back haughtily.  "I'll even show you."

            Harry rolled his eyes, though she couldn't see the gesture, "How is showing me the way it was _'spose_ to turn out going to help?"

            "Shut up!"

            "Domestics was never Hermione's strong suit," Ron commented and Harry had to agree.  A brilliant witch without a doubt, but Hermione was a near disaster in the kitchen and a complete one in every other aspect of household duties.

            "I swear I put it right here..." Hermione murmured.  She looked around the kitchen in confusion.

            "It couldn't have just gotten up and walked off, 'Mione." Harry called from down the hall.

            "Could too!" She shot back.  Childish.  "It _is_ a _wizarding_ cookbook."

            "Wouldn't you have noticed it was alive by now?"

            Hermione scowled at him, though, in all fairness, he probably couldn't see it.  "I'm sorry I didn't think to check for legs when I bought it." Her drawn out words dripped sarcasm.

            "Listen to the two of you," Ron snickered.  "Bickering like a pair of old biddies."

            "We're both twenty, Ron.  We can't even legally drink," Harry snorted.  "Hardly old."

            Hermione sighed, "Maybe I brought it into the bedroom?"

            Harry glanced around the brightly lit room.  Twilight twinkled through the window.  "I don't see it," he told her.

            She was already walking towards him, "You couldn't find your head if it wasn't attached to your shoulders."

            A deafening boom rocked the small house the kitchen exploded.  Hermione screamed.  Ron was shouting something, but the phone lay forgotten on the floor.  Harry stumbled into the hallway.  Thick, black smoke filled the small area obscuring nearly everything from sight.  Bright, orange flames were licking the hallway doorframe.  The kitchen was on fire.

            "Hermione? HERMIONE?!" His voice was growing frantic.  He couldn't see her.  Debris from the explosion was still raining down.  Bits of plaster and dry wall crumbled from the ceiling.

            There was a groan almost right beside him, and Harry dropped to his hands and knees.  His hands flew across the floor like tiny spiders.  Searching.  Another foot down the hall his fingers brushed the bushy hair of Hermione; the blast had thrown her against the wall.  Relief flooded through him in a sharp release as she reacted to his touch, groaning and trying to sit up.  She was alright.

            "Thank god!" He whispered, pulling her into his arms.

            She coughed loudly, wheezing in the smoke filled air, "H-Harry?"

            "Yeah, I'm here.  Everything's going to be okay, but we need to get into the bedroom.  Can you walk?"

            She nodded into his chest and he pulled them both to their feet.  Together they stumbled into the bedroom.

            "It wasn't me this time, Harry.  I swear." She mumbled into his shirt.

            He rubbed her back soothingly, "I know.  I know."

            There was another loud bang deep in the house.  They were both instantly alert.  Hermione looked up at him with wide brown eyes.  "There's someone in the house?"

            He didn't look down at her.  His eyes were narrowed peering into the darkened hallway.  A shadowed figure appeared in front of the flaming kitchen doorway.  Hermione's face hardened and her wand appeared in her hand.  Harry blanched suddenly.

            "Hermione...lock the door," he said slowly.

            Her eyes didn't leave the approaching intruder, but the disbelief was evident in her voice, "What?!"

            He swallowed hard, "...my wand was in the kitchen."

             Hermione let out a low breath.  Inching forward along the side of the door, she eased it shut with the toe of her slipper.  She locked it tight and cast a warding charm over it.  They didn't talk about the implications of Harry's statement.

            "Make sure Sirius is alright." He whispered.

            Hermione disappeared into the adjoining room.  She returned quickly.  Harry had closed the curtains and shoved their bureau up against the door.  It was a futile effort.  A wooden dresser would not hinder someone with a wand.

            "He's fine," She reported.  "Awake and unharmed.  I gave him a bottle to keep him quiet."

            "Good."

            "Harry.  What's going on? What's happening?"

            "It's him," Harry said grimly.

            "You're sure?"

            He nodded.  Ron was sure to go straight to the Order, but what if help was too far away?  They couldn't floo; there was no fireplace in the bedroom.  Hedwig was off delivering letters and if they tried to send Crookshanks out the window with a letter he'd surely be killed.

            ...maybe Voldemort wouldn't think to cut the phone lines.

            "How did he find us?"  Hermione whispered.

            She didn't seem to be talking to him, but he looked over at her nonetheless.  She was sitting on the edge of the bed one arm wrapped about her waist, the other pointing her wand steadily at the barricaded door.  Crumbled plaster stuck in the thick bushy hair that framed her heart-shaped face now smeared with soot.  Her clothes were equally disheveled from the explosion with her jeans even sporting a nasty burn hold near the hem.

            He thought back on all that had happened that day, and sick realization formed in the pit of his stomach.  He stared down at the phone still clutched in his hand and closed his eyes.

            "He _called_ us," He chuckled as he said it, but it was hollow sounding.

            "Voldemort..._called us_?" Hermione echoed slowly.  Harry nodded.  His weak laughter died away.  Hermione could barely muster a smile at the irony of it, "If we survive this we're buying caller id."

            Harry's face became serious, "We **will** survive this." He told her firmly.

            Hermione nodded, though the ball of fear in her stomach was trying to persuade her otherwise, "You're right."

            Their bedroom door exploded.  As the first hooded figure began scrambling over the broken pieces of their bureau, Hermione lifted her wand without hesitation.

            "Stupefy!" The red jet of light hit him square in the chest.  He fell forward onto the pile of debris and did not move again.

            There were more Death Eaters in the hallway.  They all surged forward, trampling over their fallen comrade and pushing his unconscious body aside.  Hermione shouted the spell again and another black-cloaked body hit the floor.  But the spell only attacked one person at a time, and the Dearth Eaters were pouring in too fast for Hermione to handle.  Harry had to do something – _anything_ – to help.

            He ran over to the bed and wrenched the candelabra off the wall.  He grabbed one of the candles and pulled.  It was stuck.  He twisted and _yanked_ and finally pulled the wax stick from its holder.  Hot, burning wax dribbled down the back of his hand, but the adrenaline pumping through him drowned out the minor pain.  He shifted the candle so that he was holding the very bottom between his thumb and index finger.

            "Just like a knife..." he told himself, drawing on his auror training, and released the candle.  It spun end over end in a brilliant streak of fire into the crowd of Death Eaters.  A man screamed as his robes caught fire.  Harry wrenched another candle from its socket.

            "Stupefy!"

            A new candle was thrown.  It hit a Death Eater in the temple and they crumpled to the ground.

            "Stupefy!" The unconscious man went tumbling backwards, knocking his comrades over.  A well-aimed candle landed in their tangled midst setting several robes on fire.  One body wrenched itself violently from the knot of screaming followers and ran shrieking down the hallway and out of sight.  The pain-filled screams echoing back into the bedroom were most definitely female.  One of them managed to get a spell off, but it went just wide of Hermione, blasting a past off the bed frame.

            "Stupefy!" There didn't seem to be an end to the number of Death Eaters pouring into their home.

            Harry threw the empty candelabra at the nearest Death Eater and grabbed another one.  The heavy brass candle holder hit the intruder in the head and he hit the floor heavily.  He had just pulled a candle out and was aiming it at the largest bunch of Death Eaters when a freezing gust suddenly filled the room.

            "ENOUGH!"

            A huge blast of wind slammed into them both, and he and Hermione were bowled over.

            Hermione gave a shout, crossing her arms over her face to shield it.  The force of the blast picked her up off her feet and threw her backwards across her bed.  Her head collided with the headboard as her back broke straight through a canopy post.  She hit the far wall and bounced forward face-down onto the wood floor.  Harry didn't have to see his wife crash through the bed frame for the same invisible force had thrown him back as well.  He smashed into the chair as he tried to grab a hold of the desk.  It broke into a dozen pieces and did nothing to slow him.  He hit the bookshelf that lined the far wall Hermione had hit only milliseconds before.  Books fell down upon his prone body and he lifted his arms against the wind to protect his face.  The bookshelf teetered a moment, but the heavy wood did not fall.  The wind died as abruptly as it had formed.  Harry struggled to lift the weight of books from his back.  A loud crackling noise shot through the odd silence.  Harry felt his heart stop.

            "Hermione..." he whispered.

            The canopy, unable to bear its load with only its remaining two legs, lurched and snapped off completely from the bed.  It slid off to the side and balanced for a moment against the wall before it collapsed.

            Someone was screaming, and it took Harry a moment to realize it was him, "HERMIONE!"

            Had she been under the canopy when it collapsed?  Was she hurt?  Was she _dead_?  Tears burned the corners of his eyes, and he couldn't bring himself to think about it.

            "You son of a bitch!" Adrenaline made him strong and he pulled himself from beneath half a library of books to run at the tall figure standing at the head of his attackers.

            "Grab him," Voldemort hissed.

            His followers swarmed forward, encircling Harry.  He fought them as best he could, but he was wandless and their sheer numbers beat him down.  Two Death Eaters grabbed his arms and held him firmly as the others stood just out of reach of his wildly flailing legs.  One pulled their wand on him and muttered a spell Harry couldn't remember.  It felt like a water balloon had exploded on his chest.  He lost his breath for a moment and an icy, liquid-like feeling was trickling down his stomach.

            "Get the girl.  Bring her to me," Voldemort ordered.  Three robed figures moved from behind the dark wizard and circled around to the far side of the destroyed bed.

            "No," Harry meant to say, but it came out as a garbled sort of groan.  It was hard to talk.  "NO!' He shouted forcefully; more clearly this time.

            Voldemort turned to him, his face in shadow beneath the cowl of his robes.  He seemed to be surveying Harry with interest.

            "What...what are you going to do to her?"  His words were slurred.  The spell seemed to have been some sort of tranquilizer.

            Voldemort laughed, and the sound of it made Harry wince.  It was harsh and grating like nails on a chalkboard.  An icy tremor raced down Harry's spine as the monstrous form of laughter faded away.

            "I'm going to kill her."

            Harry screamed – a wild, animalistic sound.  He tried to pull free of his captors, but his body was like lead.  His head lolled on his shoulders and his body shuddered as the paralyzing effects of the spell began to take effect.

            "My lord."

            Harry's head turned towards the speaker.  Voldemort's face, however, remained facing Harry, though, the direction of his eyes was indiscernible in the shadow.  The three Death Eaters were knee deep in the remains of Harry's bed.  Broken spears of wood jutted out in all directions covered by the gauzy cloth canopy top and buried in the white sheets that had slipped from the mattress.  A small splattering of blood marred one of the blankets, the bright crimson standing out harshly against the backdrop of white silk.

            "The girl.  She's not here."  The man was cowering, hunched over slightly as if expecting a blow.

            Harry sighed in relief.  She was alive.  He felt Voldemort's eyes on him – another icy tremor across his spine – and he turned a defiant gaze to the evil man that had haunted him all his life.  Then Voldemort turned to the three Death Eaters and his face was caught in the light of the remaining candelabras.  It was hardly a face at all.  It was triangle-shaped with angular features and a wide forehead that narrowed down into a flat, reptilian nose.  His skin was gray and peeling in small patches all across his face giving it the appearance of scales.  The haunting red eyes were the same; slanted and glowing.  Broken, jagged teeth like fangs slipped over thin lips as they twisted into a warped form of a smile.

            The "snake-man's" inhuman eyes met his and Harry felt as if he'd been plunged in a freezing lake.  His eyes rolled back into his head and he felt his stomach drop.  The screams of his parents filled his head.  They echoed over and over again, bouncing between his ears, repeating again and again.  Then it was gone, one gnarled, reptilian hand pulling the cowl back in place.

            Harry gasped, gulping in great breaths of air and sagging forward.  His head was pounding and odd lights were dancing in front of his eyes.  "She's apparated already," he choked.  "Probably a thousand miles away by now."

            Voldemort gave a raspy laugh, "No..."  Harry's eyes darted from Voldemort to the debris piled between the bed and the wall.  "I know your type.  Your parents were the same.  Now they're dead..."

            Harry lunged at him – his face was contorted with rage.  But the tranquilizer spell was doing its job – his limbs were nothing more than limp pieces of flesh.

            "No..." Voldemort continued.  "She's here.  She would not leave the child."

            Hermione didn't dare breathe.  She watched the robe obscured feet move around to the other side of the bed.  Her heart was pounding in her ears.  As Voldemort spoke her fear only grew larger, settling in a large ball at the pit of her stomach.  Fear was good.  Fear produced adrenaline and adrenaline made her stronger.  Dust was filtering beneath her nose and it took a great deal of willpower not to sneeze.

            "I want this girl found.  Tear...this...room..._apart_!"

            She could see Harry from where she was hidden.  He had fallen to his knees within the circle of black robes and dark shoes.  There was nothing she could do for him.  The fact that Voldemort hadn't killed him yet was puzzling, but hardly reassuring.  She knew in her heart that Harry's life, as well as her own, meant absolutely nothing compared to the life that lay just in the next room – completely unaware.  No matter how much she loved Harry, and no matter the pain she felt at abandoning him, she was going to sacrifice him to save their child.  They'd lived their lives.  Voldemort **would not**_ touch_ her son.

            The man screamed as she drove the wooden stake through the toe of his shoes.  Dark red liquid bubbled up around what had once been a crossbeam of her canopy.  She'd hit flesh.  He fell back on the floor, scrambling to pull the object out, but Hermione was already sliding from beneath the bed, kicking her legs furiously and pulling herself forward with one hand as the other held her wand out.

            "Get her..." Voldemort hissed.

            A hand grabbed her ankle and yanked her backwards.  The back of her head slammed against the frame of the bed, and she was left seeing white.  Her free hand gripped the frame as she kicked at the man with both legs.

            "Stupefy!" The man that had been approaching her crumpled to the floor in a burst of red light.

            She wrenched her back and put everything she had into wriggling free of the Death Eater's grip.  The springs scraped along her back and she knew she was bleeding.  The hand released her and, instantly, she was out from beneath her bed.  She leapt to her feet as four Death Eaters converged on her.

            She ignored them, running straight for the nursery.  "Wingardium Leviosa!"

            She waved her wand behind her and side-stepped the same tranquilizing spell that had incapacitated her husband.  She heard the Death Eaters' cries of surprise as the heap of wood and silk heaved itself into the air and flew over the bed.  She crashed into the closed door, fumbling to get it open.  She flung the door open and disappeared inside, slamming it shut behind her just seconds before a blasted scorch mark scarred the wall where she'd been just standing.

            Hermione ran to the crib where Sirius was laying quietly.  The mouthpiece of a Sesame Street bedecked bottle was held in his chubby fingers.  She scooped him up and pressed him close to her chest.  Relief was overtaking fear.  Her son was safe.

            Everything's going to be okay, love," she whispered, kissing the top of his head.  "Mommy's here now."  There was a crash as the levitating mass fell atop the stunned Death Eaters.

            She shifted him to her left arm, still holding him close.  With her right hand now free she lifted her wand and turned to face the door, putting her back to a corner.  Someone kicked the door open.

            Black bodies swarmed into the nursery.  They looked utterly out of place standing beside the cartoon covered walls.  One of them walked right into the quidditch mobile hanging above the doorway.  Miniature bludgers and quaffle were interspersed with wooden brooms that quivered slightly whenever a ball drifted near.  There was even a tiny golden snitch that sparkled and flapped its wings.  Hermione had made the ornament herself when she'd found out they were expecting a boy.  The Death Eater snarled in annoyance and ripped it down.

            They were staring to advance.  She glared back defiantly.  She assumed by their hesitance to attack they were supposed to capture her alive.  Big mistake.  She turned her face away and lifted her wand.

            "Avada Kedavra," She recited evenly.

            A body hit the floor and she turned back to face them.  A Death Eater near the middle had been the recipient of her killing curse.  They had taken a step back and were staring at her with mute shock.  The good guys weren't supposed to kill people; it was against the rules.  Nobody moved.  Sirius was silent in her arms.

            "Well done, Mrs. Potter."  Voldemort's gravely voice entered the room.  He was standing in the doorway.  Beside him, a completely immobile Harry was propped against the wall.

            "I did not think you had it in you..."

            "You threatened my family," she replied in a low voice.  She was dangerous.

            Voldemort gave a short bark of laughter.  "Such a pitiful attempt at bravery," he hissed.  "I'm going to kill both you **and **that _child_ of yours, and when your "dearest husband" is broken...I will kill him as well.

            The fear was back.  This was all part of Voldemort's revenge.  Hermione had to fight the urge to step back as a gnarled hand drew from within its robes a long, thin piece of wood.  Hermione swallowed and lifted her own wand.

            Harry watched helplessly.  Tears were running down his cheeks, but he didn't care.  His wife and son were about to die and he couldn't even move his big toe.  Why?  Why had he left his wand in the kitchen?  He'd felt so sure that he was safe; that _they_ were safe.  He'd gotten comfortable.  And it was going to cost them their lives.

            Hermione was defiant even now.  Her hair was a mess and her forehead was smudged with soot.  Blood was tricking down her cheek.  Harry wasn't sure which head injury had caused it.  Sirius was utterly silent, his face pressed into Hermione's sweater.  His wide, baleful green eyes moved lazily around the room.  _His_ room.  He'd seen it all before, there was nothing interesting here.  Then his eyes lit on Harry.  _Daddy_.  He smiled, gurgling, and reach out one hand to him.  He didn't know what was happening.  He had no idea.

            "Put the wand away, you pathetic little girl.  You cannot kill _me_." Voldemort said.

            Hermione did _not_ lower her wand.  Sirius had stopped squirming when he realized that Daddy was not going to pick him up, and was quiet once more, his chubby, wet cheek pressed into Mommy's shoulder.  Harry choked.  There would be no more tickles.  No more hugs.  No more airplane rides...

            Hermione met his gaze.  Her honey eyes were resigned – she looked as if she were preparing never to see him again.  The tears burned his skin.  _She was ready to die_.  All he could manage was the barest shake of his head.  She smiled at him.  Soft.  Earthly.  Her grip on Sirius tightened as she turned back to face Voldemort; to face her fate.  Harry wanted to scream.  He wanted to fight, push, punch, die – _anything_ to stop Voldemort from lifting his wand.  Instead...he got to watch.

            Voldemort walked closer to where Hermione stood, wand at his side.  When he got close enough Hermione spit in his face.  He laughed at her and didn't lift a hand to wipe the hot spittle from his face.  He raised his wand.

            "Watch your wife die, Harry.  Watch me kill her knowing there is nothing you can do to save her."

            Despite the resolution in her mind, she couldn't help but turn away as he pointed the wand at her heart.  There was nowhere to run.

            "PROTEGO!" She shouted, curling her body inwards.  Both arms wrapped around Sirius' small body.  Shielding him.  Protecting him.

            "That won't save you," The deadly words left his lips and sickly green energy exploded from the tip of his wand.  Someone was screaming her name.

            She screamed as the spell bore between her shoulder blades.  She was dead instantly.  Her body crumpled to the floor in a heap, honey eyes wide and unseeing.

            Harry screamed.

            Voldemort had turned on Sirius.  Sirius was sitting quietly on the floor beside Hermione's limp body.  He cooed a bit and reached out to pat the chocolate curls fanned out across the carpet.  A shimmering blue bubble surrounded him.  The shielding Charm had been for Sirius, not herself.

            "Avada Kedavra!"

            Sirius turned to look at Harry as the spell was cast.  He gave a little giggle just before the green energy hit him.  White light exploded outwards.  It filled the room, growing stronger and brighter until Harry couldn't see anything at all.  It was blinding.  He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain and didn't open them again until he felt the warmth of the light fade.

            He blinked rapidly against the still receding light and waited for his eyes to adjust.  The room was empty save for Sirius, Hermione and himself.  Voldemort was gone.  There was a gurgle and he looked down to see Sirius crawling towards him.  The spell was wearing off and he was able to lift his hand to his son.

            "Come here..." he whispered.  His voice was thick with emotion.  He pulled Sirius into his lap.  A door slammed downstairs.

            Sirius sneezed and giggled, drool dribbling down his chin as he tried to climb up higher.  His small arms waved around.  One of them patted his cheek wetly.  Footsteps were running down the hallway and they echoed through the thin walls of the nursery.

            "Bloody hell..."

            Ron was standing in the doorway.  He was ghostly pale making his freckles stand out sharply in contrast.  His hand was covering his mouth and he looked like he was going to be sick.

            "Don't just stand there!" Barked a hoarse voice.  Mad-Eye Moody pushed his way into the room.  "An auror never..."

            He trailed off at the sight of Hermione's body.  "Oh, _no_..." he whispered.

            Harry clutched to his son as if he would never let go.  They hadn't noticed him yet.  That was alright.  He didn't want to be noticed.  He didn't think he could bring himself to tell what had happened.

            More members of the Order were pushing through into the room.  None of them moved.  Seeing Hermione dead was a great shock.  They had all cared for Hermione.  She had been kind and smart and funny and even those who hardly knew her had to fight back the overwhelming sadness that rose at the sight of her body.  No one had thought _her_ life would be claimed in the war.

            "For God's sake," Moody growled lowly.  "Somebody get a sheet."

            Lupin moved forward when no one else would, and pulled a thin, blue blanket from Sirius' crib.

            "She deserves better than to be gawked at..." Moody whispered.

            Lupin knelt beside her, careful not to touch her, and draped the blanket over her body.  Her eyes stared straight through him; blood congealing at her temple.  He closed his eyes and took a slow breath.  When he opened them again his eyes were sad and filled with tears.

            "You always were the cleverest witch of your age," he told her in a low voice.  He lifted a hand to her forehead and was surprised to find it shaking.

            "Goodbye, Hermione," he said quietly as he closed her dead eyes.  He stood up slowly.

            "Oh, dear.  Is everyone all right?" The voice was loud and foreign in the grim silence.

            "NO!" Harry said suddenly.  _Loudly_.  People looked over at him sharply, some jumping in surprise as they notice him for the first time.  "Somebody stop her!"

            They reacted too slowly.  Harry was struggling to get to his feet, legs still tingling from sedation, when Mrs. Weasley slid into the room.

            "Mum."  Bill's hand on her arm was incessant, trying to pull her back into the bedroom.  Ron stepped in front of her, blocking her sight.

            "Come now, Ronald, step aside," She pushed him to the side and he couldn't stop her.  "It can't be that bad..." she trailed off as she stepped into the room.  A tiny broomstick snapped beneath her slippers.

            Her wide, disbelieving eyes took in the curled shaped of a body beneath Sirius' blanket.  The blood seeping from Hermione's back stained the blue blanket, black rivers spidering down to the small gold stars that lined the blankets hem.

            "NO!" she wailed, collapsing.  Her aging hands grabbed at her hair, fluttered over her open mouth, clutched at her heart.  "No! NOT _HERMIONE_!"

            Together, Bill and Fred managed to carry their shrieking mother out of the room.  Her hysterical sobs could still be heard from the bedroom.  Harry lowered his head and closed his eyes.

            "She shouldn't' have had to see that," he whispered.

            Hermione had been like a second daughter to Molly Weasley, and she had loved her as if she were one of her own.  He was grateful that Moody had insisted on the sheet.  He didn't know what the sight of Hermione's bloody body would have done to the aging woman.  Destroyed her, most likely.

            It had for him.

            A hand clasped his shoulder.  He forced his eyes open.  It was Ron.  His blue eyes were filled with tears and Harry wasn't surprised to feel the cool sickness of his own tears along his jaw.  He didn't know if he'd ever stopped crying.

            "I'm sorry, mate." Ron choked.  He clenched and unclenched his jaw.  "I wouldn't ask, but...the others they...they need to know..."

            "Yeah."  Harry pushed away from the wall and walked towards the silently waiting Order.  Sirius hiccupped and shook tiny fistfuls of Harry's shirt.  He passed Tonks, crying softly into Lupin's shoulder, and Mr. Weasley, who nodded at him as he walked by, before he came to stand in front of Moody.

            "What happened, boy?"

            Harry swallowed the lump in his throat, "Voldemort's gone.  He invaded out home.  He killed Hermione.  He tried to kill Sirius, but the curse backfired...just like with me..." he was surprised by the steadiness of his own voice.

            He shifted Sirius in his rasp, holding him tightly with both arms.  Sirius gurgled and wrapped his arms around Harry's neck, laying his head on his father's shoulder.

            "Now, if you'll excuse me..." His voice was thick again.

            Moody's hand on his shoulder stopped him, "Wait a minute, Harry.  We need more than that—"

            Harry wrenched his shoulder free, "You'll get my official report tomorrow.  Right now, I'm taking my son away from here."

            Lupin's tone was softer, "Harry..."

            "You'll get your bloody fucking play-by-play of Hermione's murder _tomorrow_, alright?!' He shouted, shoving his way out of the room.  Ron followed after him.

            "Harry?' he said quietly.  "Are you going to be alright?"

            "NO!" he shouted in anguish.  "Dammit, Ron! I'm never going to be fucking 'alright'!" He lashed out at the wall, punching it hard.  Ron stayed back as his friend vented his grief, too caught up in his own to stop him.

            When Harry was finally finished, Ron spoke.  "Where will you go?"

            Harry shook his head, "I don't know.  Away?  The Leaky Cauldron I suppose.  Anywhere but here."

            Ron nodded.  He sniffed loudly and rubbed roughly at his eyes.  "I'll, uh...make sure no one hassles you tonight, mate."

            Harry sniffed as well, running his hand through Sirius' hair.  "Thanks, Ron," he said quietly.

            He started for the door, but paused just outside it, "Ron?"

            The red-head turned to face him.  His cheeks were rubbed red, "Yeah?"

            "Could you do me a favor? When everyone's done with the place," he swallowed slowly.  "Burn it."

            Ron was shocked, "Harry are you sure?"

            Harry nodded.

            "What about your things?"

            Harry looked down at the quiet child in his arms.  As if sensing someone was watching him, Sirius pulled away and looked up with wide eyes at his father.  Harry's trembling lips formed a sad smile, "I have everything I need form this house right here."

            Ron nodded, but Harry didn't look up to see it.  He turned and started down the hallway, stopping only once in his rush to leave the house when he caught his reflection in the hall mirror.

            The tiny bloody handprint of his son glistened wetly on his cheek.  But it wasn't Sirius' blood.

            It was his mother's.


	2. Conversations Over Coffee

Gravity of Love : Archives

Title: Conversations Over Coffee

Author: KissThis

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Rating: PG

Setting: 9 years post-Hogwarts.  London.

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Disclaimer: I did not create Harry Potter or any of the characters from the Harry Potter series. I also have a mortal fear of lawyers.  Harry Potter and all its rights ©JK Rowling.

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A/N:  This is part of a compilation of COMPLETELY separate one-shot Harry x Hermione fanfics.  So, PLEASE, do **not** review saying how much you can't wait to see what happens next.  This story is DONE. 

**October 2007**

"Would you like another cup, miss?"

Hermione glanced up at the young girl standing beside her table holding a steaming decanter of coffee.  Hermione smiled and marked the page in her book, setting it down and pulling off her thin wire-framed reading glasses.  Her hands she folded upon the closed book as she leaned forward slightly to give the girl her full attention.

"Actually," Hermione said in a soft voice.  "If it isn't too great a trouble, I would very much like a cup of hot tea."

The girl returned the smile as she picked up Hermione's empty coffee cup and set it upon her already half-laden tray.  "It's no trouble at all, miss.  I'll be right back with your tea."

"Thank you."

Hermione sighed and unclasped her hands, only to resettle them in her lap.  Bemused, she turned her gaze out the window and onto the busy London streets.  The waitress had been new; otherwise Hermione would have known her name.  She also would have been called 'Hermione', rather than 'miss'.  She'd been coming to the café every day at precisely eight o'clock for the past two years and knew every square inch and every face like the back of her hand.  And never once had she sat anywhere, but at _her_ table.

_Her_ table was small, made of worn oak and pine, with a pedestal leg and ornate vine-work etched into the border.  The circular table-top was just big enough for her to rest her drink upon and her book as well, should she ever grow tired of holding it up.  The table was set back in the far corner of the café, far enough from the bright lights that there was no glare off the polished wood, but not quite entirely in shadow.  To her right was a large bay window that looked directly out upon the main street where, if Hermione ever bored of her work or book, she could look out upon the people passing by and be entranced by the simplicity of others' every day lives.

"Tea instead of coffee?  The world must be ending."

Hermione pulled her gaze from the street and turned to face her companion, having nearly forgotten he was there at all.  She promptly glared at him and picked up her book, as if she were going to ignore him completely.  He laughed and reached across the small table to push the volume back down upon the tabletop.

"Really, Harry," Hermione snorted, giving him her best look of annoyance.  "You know it's Wednesday.  I need something a little more soothing; less harsh.  I've had about all the coffee I can stand for today."

Harry chuckled a bit and shook his head.  "Yes, I know what day it is.  Are you going there again?"

Hermione tutted and gave him a look, her fingers idly fiddling with her folded reading glasses.  "Of course I am.  I can't _not_ go."

She gave him another look, as if daring him to object or argue.  Harry merely threw up his hands in defense, laughing slightly as he did so.  The look on her face was damn near priceless.  He brushed the unruly bangs from his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and gave her one of his patented roguish smiles, "I would never _dream_ of trying to dissuade you from going."

"See that you don't," she replied, dismissively.  But he knew he'd gotten to her.  He could see the smile tugging at her lips and the way her honey brown eyes danced.

The waitress returned with Hermione's tea and Hermione moved her book to the side so that the girl could set the cup down.  They exchanged niceties and Harry waited until the girl was gone and Hermione had taken the first few satisfying sips of tea before he spoke again.

"Is the tea any good?" he asked, conversationally.  "I thought cafés were only supposed to sell coffee, cappuccino and stuff."

His poor attempt at a joke made Hermione smile as she set the steaming cup down upon its matching saucer.  "A common misconception," she told him softly through a smile.  "It's 'Earl Grey' and quite delicious.  Would you like to try it?"

She began to move the saucer and cup towards him across the polished table, but he lifted a halting hand, shaking his head.  "No thank you, 'Mione.  I never really had the taste for tea."

She shrugged and lifted the cup to her lips for another drink.  She swallowed it; reveling in the bitter burning sensation it gave as it trickled down her throat, and wiped her pale lips with a napkin.  The cup clinked quietly as she set it upon the saucer.  "It's an acquired one I suppose."

"So how are things going with you?"

Hermione sighed and ran a hand through her bushy hair, "We always talk about me, Harry.  I want to know about you." She insisted earnestly.

Harry sighed as well.  Resting his elbows on the edge of the table, he pulled his chair closer and leaned towards Hermione.  "You know I can't tell you anything, 'Mione.  We've been through this."

He smiled at her apologetically, but she waved it away with her hand, "Yes, yes.  'Top secret' and all that." She sighed heavily.  "That doesn't stop me from wanting to know, though."

"So how's life?"

He grinned impishly at her startled look, and watched her expression soften.  She laughed softly and the smile reached all the way up to her eyes.  "You always were so single-minded," She teased.

Harry shrugged and his grin widened, "One of my many charms."

Her eyebrow quirked, "Did I mention cocky?"

"I assumed it was just implied."

Hermione let out an amused peal of laughter, her curls bouncing across her shoulders and her honey eyes lighting up with joy.  Her shoulders quaked as she clapped a hand over her mouth to subdue her tinkling laughter.  "Oh, Harry," She said when her giggles finally subsided.  "I've missed you so much."

Harry shook his head at her words and gave her a good-natured smirk, "I come and visit you _every_ week."

The change in her mood was instantaneous.  The light faded from her eyes as sadness overtook them.  The look on her face was one of resigned reminiscence as she looked across at him, her fingers fiddling absently with a ring on one of her hands.

"It's been nearly two years since you left, Harry." She said quietly.  Sadly.

Harry sighed, and the simple gesture was enough to know that this subject was one he had been wishing to avoid.  He'd always had a nervous tendency to run his hands through his hair and at that moment his raven locks were an utter mess.

"Hermione, please." He pleaded.  He reached out, as if to take her hand, but then drew back at the last moment.  He sighed again, "Please, let's not talk about this.  Not today."

Hermione ducked her head, letting the thick chestnut curls fall over her shoulders and obstruct her face from view.  She nodded, and the motion was nothing more than a bouncing of bushy hair.  He heard her sniff and then reach for her cup of tea.  She leaned back and took a long sip of the bitter drink, and only then did Harry see the liquidy shine in her eyes.

"Don't cry, Hermione," He whispered.  "I couldn't bear it if you cried because of me."

"Too late," she said thickly.  She forced a smile to match the weak joke, but it was too close to the truth for her to talk truly in jest.  Harry was looking at her with his handsome green eyes filled with guilt.  She turned away.  Dabbing along her eyes with the corner of a rumpled napkin, she sniffed lightly before clearing her throat to speak.

"Ron misses you too, you know," She said, quietly, still holding the crumpled napkin in her hands.

Harry spread his arms wide in helplessness, "You know you're the only one I can visit." He replied patiently as if this wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation.

Hermione nodded, "Yes, I know.  Which, by the way, you have yet to explain to me."  She gave him a pointed look, but he only smiled and shook his head as if to say that wasn't going to happen.

She frowned at him, a quick down turn of her lips, and drank more of her tea before continuing.  "Yes...I know you can't visit him, but I thought you'd like to know all the same.

Harry smiled, and Hermione suddenly felt better for having said anything at all.  "Thank you," he said.  And he meant it.

"You're welcome," she smiled over the teacup that had long since stopped steaming.

"Now, what's new in the life of Hermione Granger?"

She laughed at his stubbornness, and a small weight lifted from her shoulders to find that he wasn't truly angry with her at all.  Her gaze drifted to the window and out across the street to where two small children were kicking a ball back and forth across the sidewalk.  She watched them with rapt interest.

"Things at work are going wonderfully," She told Harry, her face still turned towards the window.  Another child had joined the first two and the small red ball rolled merrily back and forth across the cobblestones.  "We just got a preliminary grant to begin work on the new library in Paris.  The design is beautiful; black marble floors, two stories, mahogany _everything_..."

Harry chuckled as she trailed off wistfully, and he couldn't help but make a comment.  "You can take the bookworm out of the library, but you can't take the library out of a bookworm."

Her lips pursed as she tried to look affronted, "There's nothing wrong with loving a library.  They're _wonderful_ places."

"I always did wonder if you loved the library more than me 'n Ron." He teased.

Hermione smiled and told him; "No, never."  She watched an elderly couple cross the street hand in hand and smiled faintly.  "I got an owl from Ginny yesterday.  She's still in Africa working with the 'Worldwide Doctors' project.  Everything's going well, so she'll probably be down there for another month or so."

"She's probably not the most successful one of our group, but I'm glad she's following her dream," Harry said proudly.

"Ginny was always happiest when she was helping others," Hermione murmured.  "She's the only completely kind person I've ever met."

"That's a very high compliment, considering the state of the world."

Hermione shrugged.  "Everyone's having trouble picking up the pieces after the war," she commented off-handly.

"Even you?" Harry asked quietly.

Hermione chuckled into her tea, "I'm probably the only sane person left."

Something flitted across Harry's eyes, and he turned his face away from Hermione's curious gaze.  "Something I said?" she asked in concern.

Harry shook his head and plastered a smile across his face, "No.  Just thinking about the war."

Hermione waved his words away, "Nonsense, Harry.  You shouldn't dwell on such things; the war is over." She smiled brightly, "Let's talk of something else."

"How's Draco?"

It was a cheap shot and he knew it.  Her smile faltered, and she sort of turned inwards on herself.  The teacup was clutched tightly between her hands, and she was looking down at her reflection rather than meeting his gaze.

He sighed, already feeling sorry for bringing it up, but pressed on nonetheless.  "How's he doing?"

"What do you want to know?" She asked blandly.

Harry frowned slightly, knowing she couldn't see it.  "I just want to know what he's up to."

"He hangs around a lot," She said suddenly.  Her voice was tight.  She pulled her gaze from her tea, but her eyes darted away from Harry and landed on the window.  "He...he makes excuses to see me."

"How so?"

"Visiting me at the Ministry, at home..." She trailed off.  He leaned forward and she immediately turned to look at him.  Her eyes were wide and looked lost.  "He's even started coming to the café."

"He's probably just worried about you, 'Mione." Harry said.

"Well, maybe I don't want him worry about me," She huffed indignantly, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Come on, Hermione.  I don't think you have much say in the matter."  Her head snapped up, amber eyes narrowed.  She was mad.  Just great.

"And what _matter_ is that?" She hissed under her breath.

Harry held up a hand, and his voice was calm as he replied.  "Don't even start." He told her.  "I know how much he cares for you."

Her anger faded as he refused to acknowledge it, and she turned back to the window, scowling to let him know she wasn't happy with him.  She pressed her forehead to the cool glass and let her mind drift to those people standing on the other side.  A young teenage girl was juggling half a dozen shopping bags in her arms when some cruel trick of fate stirred the wind and blew her hat off her head.  Hermione watched the girl disappear around the corner after it, scrambling across the cobblestones in high heels with her arms full of parcels.

An older man was walking his dog, a small shiatsu, down the narrow side-street that led to the park.  The dog was yipping and bouncy excitedly up and down, stopping every few steps to dart back and forth across the sidewalk's width as far as the leash would let him.  The man just watched with mild interest and smoked his pipe.  Crossing the street away from the dog was a woman and her young son.  The boy strained his fingertips to reach the puppy, but his mother kept a firm grip on his hand as she pulled him to the other side of the street.  The boy scowled at his mother's turned back, and kicked dejectedly at a small pebble, sending it careening into the gutter.

"He asked me to marry him," she said suddenly.

Harry's jaw dropped.

"It was all so sudden, really," she continued hastily.  Her hands nervously traced the outline of her forgotten book.  "I mean, we haven't even really been dating, but he..."

"Go on," Harry said encouragingly.  He was watching her face closely as he leaned in to hear her answer more clearly.

"He said he couldn't live without me," She finished quickly.  She dropped her jaw into her palm and her eyes flitted down for a second, then back up to Harry, "Pretty corny, huh?" she whispered.

Harry shook his head to disagree and mirrored her by placing his jaw in both of his hands and resting his elbows on the tabletop.  "And what did you say?"

Hermione sighed and pushed away from the table until her arms were completely straight.  The chair balanced precariously on its two hind legs as she looked out the window, "I told him that was certainly an odd thing to say.  I mean, we're all going to die eventually, so saying that he couldn't live without me was pretty much an empty truth.  He was getting on just fine before we met, so it's logical to propose that he's going to die all the same, whether or not I agree to marry him."

Harry was staring at her with a horrified look upon his face, "You did not!"

She nodded furiously and finished off her tea, "I did."

"Jesus H. Christ, Hermione!" Harry exclaimed, slapping his palm against the table.  The teacup rattled on its saucer.  The chair slammed back onto all four legs.  Hermione's eyes were wide with surprise and she was holding a fist to her mouth.  "You didn't make fun of the man's choice of words when he was proposing, did you?"

She fidgeted in her chair.  She wouldn't meet his eyes when she nodded her head.  He swore and ran his hands through his hair, "Why did you do it, Hermione?"

"Well it's true! I—"

"Hermione..."

She sighed in defeat.  A soft tip-tapping noise rose as she drummed her fingers against the wood.  "I was nervous, I suppose," she answered half-heartedly.  "I mean, like I said; we never really dated.  Then, all of a sudden at lunch yesterday he just got down on his knees and—"

"He was on his knees?"

Hermione winced at the surprise and harshness of his words.  She nodded meekly.  Harry let out his breath in one great gust, and when she glanced up the look he gave her stabbed at her heart.  He looked so _disappointed_.

"I'm so sorry, Harry," She started, but he cut her off with a halting hand.

"I'm not the one you owe an apology to," He said shortly.  "What was your answer?"

"My answer?" She was confused.

"To Draco's proposal, what was your answer to Draco's proposal?"

Her reply was soft, "I didn't give him one."

"Christ, Hermione.  He loves you, and you love him.  Why are you doing this to him?"

Hermione's chin rose defiantly.  "I don't love him," she said vehemently.

Harry couldn't help but smile.  Her cheeks still held the faintest flush of her earlier embarrassment, but the look she was giving him could have melted an icicle right off the roof.  "You do.  You just don't realize it yet."

His words were so soft, and spoken with such utter surety, that their resulting content made her heart ache.  "How can you say that?" she whispered.  She was so angry at him, that she could cry.

"I'm gone Hermione.  You have to move on..." he told her quietly.

"No!" She exclaimed.  "I don't want to stop loving you!"

The tears had started without her noticing, and she rubbed at them roughly.  She didn't want to cry, she wanted to be angry.  So angry that Harry would apologize for all the terrible things he had said; that he would take them all back.

"Hermione..."

"How can you come and sit here every week with me and tell me not to love you anymore?" her voice was nearly breathless.  "I love you so much it hurts."

"Hermione, please.  You have to stop this."

"No," she said harshly.  "I will _never_ stop loving you."

Harry had stood up from his chair, and she had to crane her neck upwards to meet his eyes.  Tears were shining in her own, but her scowling face kept them from falling.  Harry, however, was not angry.  He never was.  He just stared down at her with those sad, emerald eyes of his and willed her to give in.

Hermione shook her head fiercely.  She would _not_.  "I can't possibly love Draco," she insisted.  "I could never love anyone as much as I love you, Harry.  I could never love anyone as I love you."

"I'm not asking you to," he said slowly.  "I'm asking you to allow your love for Draco free."

"Harry!?" She whispered.  Tears spilled from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, "How can you say that?  We were in love!"

"That was two years ago, Hermione."

"Two years, yes, and I've never stopped loving you since that day you left!" She shot back.

"Don't use me as an excuse to hide behind," Harry snapped, his patience finally breaking.  "You're afraid of getting your heart broken, so you refuse to love anyone else!"

Hermione's hands clenched into fists to keep herself from slapping him.  The table started to rattle from the force with which she pushing down upon it.  Tears blinded her, and she stared angrily down at her hands through blurred vision as crystalline droplets splattered against the polished oak.

Harry sighed and moved around the table to crouch down beside her chair.  His hand rested on the edge of the table, close to hers, but careful not to touch.  "Hermione...look at me, please."

Her fists unclenched as she let go of the tension running through her body.  Blinking her vision clear of tears, she turned to look at him, her chocolate curls catching the morning sunlight through the bay window.

"As a favor to me," he said softly.  "I want you to try and work things out with Draco."

They stared at each other for a very long time, but Hermione refused to answer.  Harry sighed one last time and looked up at the clock hanging above the bar.  "I have to go," he told her, somewhat regretfully.  "I'll see you next week?"

Hermione nodded reflexively, looking straight across the table, not really seeing anything.  Her tears had long since dried leaving her eyes red and slightly puffy.  She seemed to know what time it was already, without looking at the clock.  "Yes, I should be going too," she murmured and began collecting her things.

When she looked up again, Harry was gone.

She left an overly generous amount of money on the table, because she could afford it and because the people there were so good to her.  She pulled her satchel over her shoulder and slipped a pair of plain black sunglass atop the bridge of her nose then stepped out into the busy London street she'd admired from her table.

Most people were working at this time of day, so Hermione had the street relatively to herself.  It wasn't a long way to her destination, so she didn't bother buttoning up her coat and let the crisp October air barrel into her.  Unlike the teenage girl she'd observed earlier, Hermione had worn sensible shoes to her daily café visit and now traversed the cobblestones with experienced ease.

She'd traveled this path so many times she felt she could do it with her eyes closed.  She nearly did just that.  Her feet carried her down familiar streets as her eyes moved all around her, soaking up everything the Wednesday morning atmosphere could provide.  She stopped at a shop on the corner of Westphalia Ave., and opened the door to a rush of cool air.

The floral shop was always cold, to better preserve the flowers, but it never seemed to bother Hermione.  She pulled the door shut behind her and made her way straight for the counter, where an aging man with a receding hairline sat reading the newspaper.  At the sound of her shoes click-clacking against the tile floor he lowered the paper, and upon seeing her face closed it completely.

"'Ello, Hermione," he said cheerfully in greeting.

She mustered a smile and a sort of half-wave as she reached the counter, "Hello, Pete."

"I've got your usual right here, all ready to go."  He lifted the simply bouquet of flowers from behind the counter and handed it to her.  A dozen white roses interspersed with a great deal of baby's breath.  In the center of the bouquet was a single blood red rose.  Thirteen roses in all.

She accepted them gratefully, burying her nose in the bundle to inhale the sweet honey scent.  It was so hard to find good smelling white roses, but good ol' Pete had never failed to come through.  She tucked the bouquet under her arm and fished her wallet out of the pocket of her tan felt trench.

"You've been crying," Pete the flower-guy commented bluntly as she paid.

She shrugged and wiped self-consciously at her red eyes, "Yes...I guess I have."

"Has someone done something to upset you?" He cracked his knuckles menacingly, but the gesture only made Hermione smile.  Pete wouldn't hurt a fly.

"No," she said , stuffing her receipt in her purse.  "I suppose it was my own doing..."

He made a confused face, but Hermione was already stepping out onto the street.  "Thanks, Pete."

"See you next week!" And the door closed with a loud jingle.

Hermione crossed the street and her shoes immediately sank into the soft grass.  She gripped the flowers tightly in her hand as she walked up the hill and out of the protection of the buildings.  Wind buffeted her from all sides, but she maintained her steady climb up the hillside.  Images of Draco flashed in her mind, but she shook them all away until she reached the very top.

At the very top of the hill was a large stone cross that served as a marker for the only grave on the hillside.  Hermione's feet carried her towards it, tracing the familiar path until she was kneeling before it.

The flowers were clutched so tightly in her hands her fingers ached.  She took a deep breath and the air whistled through her teeth.  Forcing her fingers to uncurl she laid the bouquet down upon the grass at the cross' base.  With both hands free she reached up to caress the cold stone; lovingly, carefully.

Draco's face floated into her mind, pale and handsome.  He smirked at her and his icy blue-gray eyes flashed as he faded away again.  Dropping her forehead against the cool stone, Hermione cried.  She pressed her palms to the cross and let the tears fall silently.

Thunder rumbled in the distance.  A storm was coming.  Pushing back on to her heels she brushed the ragged tendrils of hair from her eyes.  Dark streaks patterned the marker where her tears had fallen.  Her hands were more tentative this time as she reached out and traced the engraved words.

_"Don't use me as an excuse to hide behind," Harry snapped.  "You're afraid of getting your heart broken, so you refuse to love anyone else!"_

Sniffling, she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her coat and was grateful that she hadn't bothered with make-up that morning.  She gave the bouquet a compulsive touch, assuring her that it was where she had laid it, and slowly stood. 

The wind picked up in a rush, flapping the tails of her trench coat and twisting her hair about her face in a torrent of bushy brown curls.  If any tears still fell they were whipped away by the gale before they could even drop down her cheeks.  As she stared at the stone cross, she unconsciously began to fidget with her ring again.

"I will _never_ stop loving you," she whispered fiercely.  Then she walked away.

The storm was starting and rain splattered down onto the stone monolith, dribbling over the beautifully carved words.

_Harry James Potter_

_1980-2005_

_Loyal Friend,_

_World Protector,_

_Beloved Fiancée._


	3. Poisoned Kisses

**Completed:** 1/27/05 6:56 PM  
**Posted:** 2/15/05 10:56 PM

Timing: Post-Hogwarts

Note: Entered in the "Quills Spills Inspirations 4" contest. The voting hasn't taken place yet, but it's officially closed so I think I can post this here without thieves going after it. Enjoy. (I know I said I'd get a Harry x Hermione up that wasn't depressing, but...I'll try again later. The contest just didn't call for happiness. And...well, it's _kinda_ happy)

* * *

In a remote plot of land somewhere in the south of France, a tiny cottage, its chimney huffing cozy smoke into the overcast sky, sat at the edge of a moderately sized forest – the only other location of life for miles. What was most interesting about the small house, however, was that, unless one knew exactly what to look for, they would only see an abandoned stone quarry, rotting beams slicked with slime and lichen. Quite ingenious really, for one might come to the conclusion that the owners of this "invisible" cabin rather fancied their privacy; and they would be correct. After a fashion.

This cottage, with it's brightly lit windows and a walkway lined with azaleas, was not placed in the exact middle of nowhere for any trivial misanthropic reason, but for the purpose of protection. Yes, this tiny home, with its magic shields a mile thick, was a safehouse for the numbers one, three, and four of Voldemort's most wanted list; Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ronald Weasley.

They'd just finished dinner; a simple affair of fish sticks and salad and though hardly grand, it filled their stomachs. They were nearing the end of the month where fresh supplies would be brought to them, and had to make due with what was left until then. No one much cared what they ate anyway.

The dishes had been abandoned in the sink, without so much as even filling it with soapy water, for the time when one of them would lose the inevitable bout of 'rock-paper-scissors' and be forced to tend to the food-caked plates in the late hours of the night when all they really wanted was to curl up in bed and sleep til midday. All they seemed to be doing lately was sleeping

Sitting around the fire, they'd settled into the holes left in the mess even Hermione had given up on cleaning, to tend to their own various, but repetitive, after-dinner habits.

Harry sat in the sole armchair, starring despondently at some spot just to the side of the mantel that one would think held all the answers to the questions of the universe the way he was looking at it so devotedly. Ron, having left Harry after the bouts of blank staring insued just weeks into their forced hiding, was playing Wizard's Chess by himself and winning.

Hermione, the only one of the three who still bothered properly getting dressed in the morning, had Hogwarts: A History cracked open on her lap; but not even the beloved, and much read book interested her anymore. She could recite the entire volume from start to finish and then backwards, but the thought no longer brought her pride.

She always swore that she'd make the Order work last, but every month when their old Headmaster came bearing supplies and work, most usually research, she'd throw herself into it desperately to escape the sheer nothingness that was their safehouse. She'd usually do Harry and Ron's work too, but none of it lasted past the second week.

And that was the truth of it.

One would think that sharing a house with your two best friends, never having to work, able to do anything you could possibly imagine with your free time would be the greatest thing, but the quaint house was suffocating, your friends were more annoying than not, the sheer ability to do _anything_ made it feel as if there was nothing to do at all, and you'd welcome even the mere mention of work that would force you out of your stupor and off of the couch cushions that had molded to fit your body.

The trios days mostly consisted of sleeping and eating. They would wake up some time midday, save for the rare days where Hermione would refuse to lay lethargically in bed for hours after waking, then they would practice their wandwork and dueling skills, outside if the weather permitted, and after a pitifully constructed lunch. Hermione tried her best, but she was properly awful at domestics and the task often fell to Ron who, though used to cooking for a huge house, more often than not came up short on meals. After that, they'd come back inside for an equally half-done supper. The three of them passed well into the late hours of the night, sometimes talking about their childhood, but more than likely passing the time in silence before retiring in the near-dawn hours.

The first month and probably well into the second had been wonderful, don't misinterpret. Harry and Ron had played Quidditch before breakfast, while Hermione had spent days absorbed in tailoring the house to their own specific likes and dislikes. The boys had discovered after the first attempt that Hermione _could not, _in any fashion, cook, and that she was most definitely never to attempt again. They'd prepared themselves extravagant snacks, if not even more extravagant dinners, with wine and candles and perfectly matching place-settings. It was as if they were playing house.

They'd gathered together on late nights in someone's bedroom to talk about what had happened in their separate lives since graduation, despite the fact that they had been in constant contact since that day six years ago. They'd enjoyed their close proximity again, that recalled fond memories of Hogwarts and the Gryffindor Tower.

But then the cottage was as decorated as it could be, and Hermione found herself with too much time on her hands. They ran out of stories they hadn't yet shared, and the memories of times past became less amusing than they had been to live through, and, thinking back now, the only memories they could dredge up were less than pleasant, leaving them to abandon their reminiscing altogether.

Quidditch became tiring after a while, as it inevitably would with only a Seeker and a Keeper to play, and Harry and Ron had resigned themselves to an ongoing chess tournament they kept score of on a long parchment, before that too was cast off.

And so now, here they sat, five months into hiding from a dark lord that would stop at nothing to see them pushing up daisies, eating half-cooked fish sticks and scarcely capable of having a full conversation with one another. Hermione had finally thought to requisition a muggle television from Dumbledore, but she didn't really think that its arrival next visit would do much to stave off the maddening nothingness that swathed the cottage. She actually feared she might well go mad. She'd heard it happening to lesser witches than herself – cooped up in small, enclosed spaces, nothing for the mind to do but turn its scrutiny inwards.

It was that very fact, with its resulting revelations (that both scared and confused her) that made Hermione Granger _hate_ the little cottage.

This night, though, for all that it seemed just like any other, however, was different. Hermione could see it in the way Harry kept continually shifting in the chair, and the way he was no longer able to stare unceasingly at the wall. Unable to read her book as she was, she was trying her very own best to stare at the fire, but kept getting distracted by his green eyes sliding inadvertently from their fixation on the mantel to her, and then, subsequently, to Ron, who had noticed something was off as well. The clicking of the marble chess pieces, who'd been manhandled so often their faces were worn clear off, was louder than usual, and when Hermione looked over, she found that he was losing.

Ron _never_ lost to himself.

Then the rain started, as if mocking their own inability to make noise as it did, and the sizzling of the flames in the hearth was enough to finally stir one of them to speak.

"Somebody charm the fire," Harry muttered.

The sole female of the group got quickly to her feet and cast the spell ahead of her ginger-haired companion, remembering the last time he'd attempted the charm and in addition to keeping the rain out, had kept the smoke _in_.

The cottage smelled for days.

There was a small shine from the end of the vine wood rod she held in her hand, and the hissing fire quieted. The rain had started up quickly, and for good reason; the tiny house rocked with the buffeting of the fierce French country wind, and the droplets of rain hit the dusty window panes in a harsh staccato rhythm. The sound was the only marker of the torrential storm carrying on outside the tiny cottage; the fire remained cheerily blazing, unhampered by water spilling down its floo, the glare of the light on the windows made it impossible to see anything but the room's reflection against the black backdrop, and even the vibrations from the wind and rain were hardly felt through the layers of shielding.

Hermione had just properly reseated herself, smoothing her white skirt beneath her legs, when Harry broke the silence again, in a rare overflow of conversation. (It was a disconcerting thought when two sentences spoken between friends felt odd and out of place)

"I'm done."

Hermione froze, mid-seat; hovering over the couch cushions with her hands still pressing the slick material of her skirt to the backs of her legs. She glanced up at the swinging pendulum clock above the mantel and slowly sat down. "But it's only eight o'clock. Are you feeling all right?"

"You are looking a bit peaky," Ron offered.

"No, you guys." His eyes were burning holes into his trousers as his squeezed great fistfuls of his slacks into his hands. "I'm _done._"

Hermione shot a worried look to Ron, and was only more distressed by the unusually solemn look on the lanky boy's face. Setting her book shut on the coffee table, she pushed aside all the papers and the coffee mug that held her quills and muggle pens before turning on the couch to face her rigid friend.

"Harry, what—"

"I'm going after Voldemort. Tonight."

Hermione's stomach plummeted. "Harry! We're not ready!"

He lifted his eyes to hers and the coldness in them was like a slap in the face that made her breath short. "You're not, but I _am_."

Ron sat up straighter on the floor, but the chess board was rattling with the force at which he was gripping the edge. "What are you saying?"

"I'm going alone, Ron. I can't let you and Hermione get hurt."

"I don't believe you!" Hermione cried, jumping to her feet. "You can't be serious about this Harry – Ron and I are going with you no matter what."

Harry shook his head, looking so calm and resigned that Hermione was so very close to being angry with him. Standing up himself, he quietly said "He's already taken my family from me. I won't let him take the both of you." He put both his hands on her shoulders, but she threw them off as if his touch on her was acid. His face fell.

"Don't touch me," she choked out, and her voice was trembling despite how angry she wanted him to know she was.

"Damnit, Harry!" Ron shouted, slamming his fist on the chessboard. The black bishop on his side spun a bit on its base and toppled over and off onto the floor. "This is exactly what Voldemort wants you to do. I know you think your doing the right thing, mate, but if you go alone he'll _kill _you."

Harry was shaking his head, refusing to hear a word of it. Hermione fretfully tugged on the sleeves of her pink jumper and wished with all her might that things could go back to the way they'd been just yesterday. She'd gladly give up her sanity to ensure the survival of her best friend.

"Are you listening to me?" Ron was on his feet now too, freckles disappearing into the bright red flush of his face. "He. Will. _Slaughter_. You."

"And then he'll come after us," she said it in such synchronization to her realization that her voice still had the soft lilt of surprise to it. Her eyes weren't really looking at anything, and her entire expression was one of dazed recognition. "He'll kill you...and _then he'll come after us_."

She was speaking more to herself now, then trying to dissuade Harry, and she spoke each word with a deliberate and calculated tempo. "He'll kill me...and he'll kill Ron." She looked now to Harry and her eyes held such a desperate plea as the tears began to form. It was her face that made Harry's stony eyes soften. "We'll die if you go alone, Harry," she whispered. "Don't we mean more to you than that?"

He ran a hand rakishly back through his hair and paced around the coffee table to the fireplace. "Of course you do; that's the whole point! I have to save you and this is the only way."

Hermione was now fighting to hold back tears as she turned away from him. Lifting a quivering hand, she placed it over her mouth to stop herself from betraying her emotions with even the faintest sound. As the two boys began to yell at one another, Hermione squeezed her eyes shut tight against the burning crystalline tears.

"Will you stop playing the hero for once!" Ron started yelling, throwing his hands up in the air.

"You _know_ I never wanted this!" Harry shot back, his own voice starting to rise.

"And _you_ know it doesn't have to be you or no one. Why the hell would you go alone, when you've got an entire Order of powerful witches and wizards who'd be more than willing to save the bloody world!"

"There's hardly an Order left!" Harry was shouting now, and their features looked equally harsh in the light and shadows of the fire.

With a sound of disgust, Ron pushed off of the mantel and walked away. "You haven't thought this through _AT ALL_!"

"I THINK ABOUT IT EVERY DAMN NIGHT!"

Hermione gasped in shock, and whirled around to witness the face off between her beloved friends. Harry's ragged breathing echoed in the humid air of the living room while the rain beat down over head of them, and his hands were balled into fists at his sides. Very slowly, Ron looked first over his shoulder then turned completely all around. His face was struggling to remain neutral.

"Don't you think I've imagined every possible thing that could happen to you?" Harry said in a voice dangerously low. "To both of you? I've seen you die in ways too terrible and horrendous for others to even _comprehend_. So don't you _dare_ say I haven't thought this through. I see Voldemort killing you..._every_. Time. I. Close. My. Eyes."

The look on Ron's face as he said this words was nothing less than pure anger, and if it was even possible he looked so much terribly more livid as tears of his own came to his eyes. "You're an idiot," he said with as much disgust and loathing as he could muster before walking to Hermione's side. He bent over the couch, bracing his arms against the back, and stood there with his head bent trying to regain his composure.

Hermione Granger stepped up to bat.

"Do you think so little of our friendship?" She asked, and Harry was taken aback – both, by her painfully softer tone, and by the abrupt question. He gaped at her.

"We see it too; Ron and I the same. You're not the only one who can't sleep at night."

"Hermione..." He started to cross the room to her, then stopped midway. The memory of her flinging off his hands was still fresh in his mind; and it stung. "I won't let him hurt me."

"If you go," her lips were quivering. "Then you'll make _all_ our dreams come true; ours _and_ yours."

He brushed past the low table and came up just inches away from her, where she stood hugging her arms about her chest. "He will not touch one hair on your head," he swore it with such conviction that Hermione almost believed him. "Remus will protect you...you know he loves you like a daughter—"

"_Remus_?" Her mouth opened and shut like an uprooted flobberworm. "You're, you..._you've sent for **Remus**_"

All it took was one brief flash of guilt across his handsome face to change Hermione's teary confusion to understanding. "He's not coming to protect us...you're bringing him here to stop us from following you!"

"Hermione, listen." He grabbed a hold of her arms as if he might need to shake her to get her to finally see how right he was.

"No, Harry!" She pulled at her arms frantically, but he wouldn't let go, and frankly she was too hysterical to truly fight him. "Y-You...You! _You_ are the one not listening! You've...re-resorted to putting your own friends – best friends! – under house arrest!"

He winced at her harsh words, and looked truly upset at having made her cry. "That's not it at all—"

"I don't want to hear it!" She shrieked, wrenching her wrists from his grip in a fit of outraged strength.

"Hermione!" He tried desperately to pull her arms back down and stop her from fighting him.

Tears had blurred her eyes, but she could still make out the fuzzy peach outline of his face, and as she ripped her right hand away from him again, she knew exactly without being able to see the exact mark that as her hand came forcefully down upon him she had slapped him right across the face.

In the deafening silence that followed, she whispered those three painful words. "I _hate _you."

And then she was pushing past Ron and knocking into the coffee table. The mug holding her pens went rolling, spilling her quills out all over the glass. Far from caring, she was already running out the front door and into the storm, not bothering in her fleeing to close the door behind her. It banged forcefully back against the wall again and again with each blast from the wind.

Ron heard Harry curse and caught the bespectacled boy glancing at him, before he was vaulting over the couch and chasing Hermione out into the storm. Letting out a long breath, Ron straightened and looked over his shoulder at the pile of scattered quills that were still rolling slightly on the clear tabletop.

"That's the signal," he murmured.

-

-

Harry was immediately blinded.

Dragging his sleeved wrist across his rain-coated glasses, he tried to shield his eyes as best he could. The world around him was so dark he could scarcely see his own feet as they slipped across the slick grass, and the rain was invisible in the gloom despite the sound and feel of it drenching him from head to toe.

Finally halting his hodgepodge wandering, he tried to ignore the pounding of his heart and think clearly. He thought of Hermione then and knew instantly that she'd have crossed around the cottage and gone towards the forest. Wiping his soaked jumper sleeve across the lenses of his glasses, and only succeeding in smearing the beaded droplets, he sniffed at his runny nose and hurried towards where the dark night became absolutely pitch black with the clustered line of giant evergreens.

As he rounded the bed he caught sight of her almost instantly. She was like a blinding beacon in her pale pink jumper and white skirt. She was sitting at the top of the hill with her back to the cottage, and him, and her knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her mud splattered stockings.

If she was really made at him, which he knew she was – or else she would never have said those painful words, she would have run so far into the forest that was her sanctuary that he would never have found her. But there she was, sitting in her nearly florescent pastels, in plain sight. She hadn't thought she'd needed to hide..._she hadn't thought he'd come after her_.

Harry stopped dead, just a ways down the hill from her, as the realization hit. It _hurt_; more than he'd ever imagined it could. The thought that _she_ could think so little of him, that he'd just up and leave her after their fantastic row...it sunk to the bottom of his gut like a heavy stone to the bed of a lake. And there it festered.

The cold was finally overtaking him, as he stood there, hastily shoved on sneakers squelching in the muddy ground. The smell of wet grass was strong. He stood there as still as stag caught out in the open field, torn between going back to safety and going forward into danger.

The rain beat down, seemingly harder than ever before, and the wind picked up icing his rain-sodden sweater against his skin with a frigid vengeance. He shivered despite his resolve to move neither way, and still, with his splattered glasses distorting her image, he could not find the resolve to go to her even after he'd come so far with that very intention.

Lightening flashed in a brisk series of bursts, illuminating the homely grounds, and in the half-second where the harsh white light covered everything...Harry could see every brunette curl on her head. And then the lightening flashed again, draping Hermione in his shadow.

She whirled around and he was caught.

He watched her lips move in the strobing light, and he was fairly certain it had been his name, but the following thunder was too loud to make it out. Harry had no other choice – he'd have to finish the last few steps.

He was hurt and unsure, but he came within a foot of her as she struggled up from the slippery slope to meet him. Ready to launch into another full out row, the words were on his lips as he came to a stop in front of his best friend and looked down into her face.

Her bushy hair was now heavy with rain and plastered to her forehead, and the added weight of water to her thin jumper pulled it down heavily over her hands, obscuring them from view. Her skin was nearly translucent in its alabaster hue, making the red rings around her eyes all the more prominent. She'd been crying.

Harry couldn't speak.

Hermione did it for him. "You've been neglecting your glasses again..." Sniffling, she ran her pink covered hand under her nose and reached up to divest him of his glasses. Tapping her wand against the rims she said "_Impervius_" in a clear voice. After that, she wordlessly handed the now bewitched spectacles back to him and he slid them up over his nose.

Now seeing her perfectly in all her distraught glory, and knowing that it had been _him_ and _his _words that had caused it, Harry wished she hadn't had the common sense to charm his glasses. As it was, he felt the need now to touch her, and when his hands alighted on her shoulders he felt the cold tremors of her muscles beneath.

"Hermione, please...I don't want to leave things between us like this."

She sniffed loudly and looked down. "You shouldn't be leaving at all."

Harry sighed and racked his brain trying to think of how to fix this. "What do you want me to say?" he asked.

"That Remus can go back home and be with Nymphadora when all this goes down, because Ron and I are coming with you," she told him in all seriousness.

In frustration he gripped her shoulders tighter and lowered his face to press his forehead against hers. "I-I..._can't_."

They stood together in silence; the argument Harry had expected never coming. The rain continued to beat down on the two solitary companions, and though they were both frozen to the bone and shivering uncontrollably, they made no move to head back inside. This moment...the moment they were living right that _instant_...there on the tiny hill in southern France – _this_ moment was too important to miss.

"I think there's only one thing left for me to say..." Hermione murmured and they were so close, he heard the words as if her lips had been pressed against his ear. The thought made him shiver.

"You're..." he hesitated. "Agreeing with me?"

She looked up at him so quickly her brown eyes bore sharply into his. "Never. It's the stupidest plan I've ever heard – and something you'd expect from Ron, much less _you_."

He groaned, though the wind took it away and ground his forehead into hers, as if he could somehow transfer without the words he was continually tripping over, just how right he knew his plan was. "Hermione..."

"You can't go!" She nearly shouted into his face, and his hackles rose.

"WHY!" He snapped.

"Because I love you!"

Harry stared in complete and utter shock at her resolute face, before confusion took another swing at him. Hermione's lips began to tremble and then the tears started pouring out of her red and swollen eyes again to mix with the iron tasting rain. All he could think to do as she shook now from sobs was to comfort her.

"Hush," he whispered, squeezing her shoulder soothingly. "Please don't cry, Hermione. Oh please..."

"You can't go because I love you, you big, daft idiot," she rasped out, and when she touched his face he could forget all about being called an 'idiot'. Her other hand found a tight grip on his upper arm, as if Hermione worried her legs might fail her, and both were warmer than he could imagine them being in such freezing conditions.

She was searching his face for some confirmation that her feelings returned; the tiniest flicker, a flash in his eyes, the hint of a smile. Harry too was searching; and he was surprised most at the end of it to find that he wasn't surprised at all, at least about his feelings for the young woman, who, until this point, had always fit the profile of 'best friend'.

"I...I think I love you too," he swallowed hard.

That was all she needed, and in one half-heartedly graceful lift onto the toes of her red, mud coated mary janes, she connected their lips. Harry was amazed then, when, after their deep and meaningful exchange of confessions, she pulled away almost immediately, leaving his mouth tasting disgustingly bitter.

Then his legs dropped out from underneath him.

Harry tried to stand, but every limb was paralyzed. White filled his vision and he was able to move his head just enough so that he could lock eyes on Hermione crouching beside him. While he was busy gaping at her in a dazed shock, she leaned over him and fished his wand out of his pocket.

"Hermione..!" he hissed in disbelief.

Slipping his ebony wand up her sleeve, she settled back on her haunches and glanced at something off in the distance before looking back down at him. "I'm sorry, Harry," she said, and her voice sounded truly sincere. "But it had to be done."

She ran a wet sleeve across her eyes, smearing the red pencil she'd used to line her rims. She then wiped at her lips, more roughly this time, until she was satisfied of their cleanliness and left them a raw cherry.

"What did you...do to me!" It was difficult to talk as whatever she'd placed in his system began to affect his higher functions.

"It was a mixture of mugglewort and henbane on my lips. There wasn't enough henbane to severely poison you, and the mugglewort took care of the convulsions. It won't hurt you at all, I promise." She swore, and had the consideration to cast a rain repelling dome over the both of them. "You'll wake up in a few hours; with a bit of a nasty headache I'm afraid. Remus will be here by then to take care of you."

She pressed her hand to his cheek, the briefest graze of fingertips, before pulling away. "I really am _so_ sorry, Harry. But Ron and I knew you'd try and do this one day, we had to have a plan."

"Ron...too!"

"I'm here, mate."

Ron's voice came from above him, and his position was confirmed when Hermione looked upwards and then, sighing, shook her head. As strong arms hooked him beneath the shoulders and lifted him onto his unfelt feet, Hermione straightened. He was losing the ability to form thoughts properly and there was a heavy-heartedness that gave him an inexplicable urge to close his eyes and drift off to sleep. Instead, he forced his darkening focus on Hermione's face and saw up close her guilt-ridden features.

"You tricked me..." he groaned, not wanting the sad look on her beautiful face to sway him, and the accusation held more hidden barbs for Hermione alone.

They caused such distress to come to Hermione's face, that despite everything she and Ron had done, Harry wanted to swallow those words back up. "No, Harry..." she insisted, genuinely teary-eyed. "I _do_ love you. That's why I can't let you do this."

The sudden absence of what had seemed like the ever-present rainstorm, made Harry's emerald eyes roll to the side to take in the smooth wooden walls of the cottage, then back to Hermione as Ron dragged him in a dripping trail to the couch. She cast a few drying spells on him and levitated the afghan throw to unfold over his legs.

He watched her look back over her shoulder and some words were exchanged with an off-camera Ron that he couldn't hear at all, and then she was looking back at him. He knew they were alone.

"Don't worry, Harry." He heard her voice like it was some far off call – like she was speaking to him from the other side of a vast gulf. "We'll take care of it."

_We'll take care of it..._Harry realized too late, his friends true intentions. _No! You can't! You can't go after Voldemort!_ He screamed, but the words never made it to his lips. He battled desperately to say something that could dissuade his friends' objective, but he couldn't even say _anything_ at all.

Ron materialized from his disappearance up the stairs and he held both of their cloaks in one hand. He said an apology that was only half heard as Harry's inner voice was screaming out in frustration. Hermione glanced back at the redhead and nodded.

_They were leaving._

He could only watch helplessly as the henbane began to take effect, and Hermione reached out to brush back his unruly bangs. He no longer was able to hear her voice clearly when she spoke, and though it was now faintest of whispers, _he heard it _– her last words to him

"Please forgive me."

Then, Hermione leaned over the couch and placed a tender, lingering kiss upon his cold lips...and it was a _true_ kiss.

But Harry was too far into unconsciousness to taste it.


	4. Carnival Sweethearts

**Completed: **3/15/05 10:36 PM

**Posted: **3/15/05 10:52 PM

A/N: Huzzah! It's getting more light-hearted! I actually made the effort for fluff, though the ending twisted on me a bit. I think this one was really cute. Enjoy.

* * *

"Mummy?" 

The petite girl standing outside the candy floss stand looked no more than eight or nine judging by the serious look on her face as she held a bright blue balloon in one hand and the pristine state of her yellow sundress. Precociously matching headband with its fake, fabric flowers sewn on and sitting in her thick chocolate curls, she tugged gently at her mother's skirts and waited patiently for her attention.

"What is it, princess?" Helen Granger crouched down to bring her eyes level with her daughter's. As she'd always done, Helen talked and treated the mature child as an adult; more importantly, as an equal.

"Do you see that little boy over there?" Little Hermione Granger asked. Her doleful brown eyes were smile-inspiring as she turned to the side and pointed a cherubic finger across the carnival square.

A boy about the same age as her sat on a bale of hay – one of the many scattered around the grounds for ambiance. His gangly limbs were all akimbo in his poor attempt at folding himself into a corner of the hay display. Ebony hair looking as if he'd slept at the carnival the night before and coke-bottle glasses so large they dwarfed his entire face, he looked quite the sight. At least to the prim and proper Hermione Granger.

"Why yes! I do see him." Helen Granger shielded her eyes against the rising sun. "You know, he looks rather lonely, dearheart – why don't you go over and introduce yourself?"

Hermione blinked those baby browns. "Where will you and Father be?"

Quirking her lips to restrain her amused smile, Helen looked around before her eyes settled on a stand down the way and she pointed. "I fancy a cup of lemonade. We'll wait there for you."

"Alright," Hermione nodded. "I won't be gone too long." The cultured words sounded a bit distorted leaving her young mouth, but she kissed her mother on the cheek and skipped over to the mountain of fodder, blue balloon bobbing behind her.

The boy didn't look up until she was standing right in front of him, white paten-leather shoes touching at the heels and forming a perfect "V" as she'd been taught. When he did raise his head she promptly thrust out her hand, and said quite clearly: "I'm Hermione Granger."

The boy sniffed and ran the back of his hand underneath his nose. He looked at her suspiciously as if she were offering him a poisonous snake rather than a hand; squinting behind his wide glasses.

"Harry Potter," he mumbled, taking her hand.

"I'm seven years old," she declared, climbing up on the haystack beside him and straightening out the skirt of her dress. Her balloon **ponged!** on the string as she resituated, and when she was done her dangling feet didn't even come close to touching the ground. She crossed them at the ankles.

"How old are you?" She prompted, when he didn't reciprocate.

He'd turned back away from her, knees pulled up to his chest as he looked out across the crowd, and so his reply was rather muffled and hard to hear. "I'm, uh, eight..."

"Well, it is very nice to meet you Mr. Potter," Hermione said politely.

Harry looked back over his shoulder, lip pulling up to one side as he gaped at her and trying to do the raised eyebrow thing. "You're _weird_."

"Am not!" She insisted indignantly.

"Are too!"

"Am NOT!"

"Are too!"

"Infinity-am not!" Hermione declared smugly, crossing her small arms over her chest.

"Are too infinity plus one!"

The small girl's mouth dropped open. "Well, well—" she'd developed a stammer in her outrage. "Well, that isn't even conceive-a-ma-ble," she blustered and stumbled over the difficult word. "So, _I_ win."

Young Harry made a face at her and stuck out his tongue. "Whatever, _weirdo_."

"My name is _Hermione_," she enunciated, slamming her tiny fists onto her hips with such gusto that her balloon bobbed excitedly with a series of **pongs!**

"Well, uh...what kind of name is Hermominneee anyway," the seven year-old shot back in the way of insulting young children had. "Sounds like a weirdo name to me!"

"You're a very rude little boy," she accused.

Harry jutted out his chest like a stuffed bird. "I'm older than _you_."

"Yes, but...oh!" She squealed truculently. "My mother says 'age doesn't matter unless your cheese', so unless you think yourself a block of cheddar—"

"I don't even know what you're bloody talking about!" Harry exclaimed. He threw his arms up in the air, his uncontrollable lankiness making for an odd show.

"Watch your language!" Hermione scowled.

They glowered at each other in silence for as long as their attention spans held out, then they were both watching the interesting people of the carnival move back and forth across the square. Harry had found a particularly fascinating whack-a-gopher participant to spy on, when the "weird" girl sitting beside him sighed.

"What are you doing sitting here all alone, anyway?" She asked rapaciously.

The boy shrugged, his shoulders brushing the bottoms of his ears in the exaggerated movement of children. "My uncle left me here."

"Really?" Hermione's eyes were as wide as her balloon.

After his nod of confirmation, she looked down at her shoes. She scrunched up her toes beneath the paten-leather confines; the insides were becoming slick as the warm summer heat made her perspire.

"If you'd like, and if my parents agree of course, you're..." She heaved a sigh as if it were the most self-sacrificing thing she were about to do. "You're welcome to spend the day with us. Father promised to take me on the ferris wheel next."

The ferris wheel itself was easy for Harry to spot. It rose high above the main hub of the carnival, shiny and red as one of the local fire trucks he'd seen driving through the streets outside Privet Drive. It gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, lazily turning with its swaying basket cage; the people occupying them invisible from such a distance.

Little Hermione saw such a longing on his face as he gazed up at the big, red ride stretching to the sky. Reaching down she untied the bow that anchored the balloon to her wrist and gripped the now free-hanging string tightly in her hand. Contemplating the bobble floating above her head, she gave a tug for one last **pong!** and then, with a small, nearly unnoticeable, hesitation of loss, offered it out to Harry Potter.

A look of shock on his spectacled face, Harry gingerly accepted the gift and was then presented once more with the tiny, feminine hand of Hermione. "I'll introduce you to my parents."

No sooner had he laid his palm upon hers then like a dark thought summoned by the promise of joy, a gruff voice boomed over both of the two small children, dwarfing them physically by its sheer magnitude. "Just where do you think _you're_ going, boy?"

A large man, the size of a small house, blocked the sunshine from warming their backs and covered the entire display of hay in his monstrous shadow. A horse-faced woman was peering over his bulky shoulder and a boy more wide than he was tall wandered around behind them, a corndog in one hand and candy floss in the other.

Remembering her manners, Hermione hopped off the bale and patted down her skirt before offering the tall man her hand. "Good afternoon, sir."

Surprised, the man had little choice but to take her small hand and shake it. "And who are you?"

"Excuse me," she pardoned, and gave a short curtsy. "My name is Hermione Jane Granger. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"What a _cordial_ young lady you are," the sallow woman praised, beaming rather atrociously at her. "Every youth should be like you and our Duddykins."

Hermione didn't know what a 'Duddykins' was, but she smiled all the same and waved to the woman that had complimented her. "If you wouldn't mind sir, ma'am – I was wondering if I might invite Harry along with my family around the carnival?"

The man grimaced in Harry's direction and Hermione looked curiously between them. "No, of course not." He rasped. "Have..._fun_."

For some reason, Hermione felt protective of the older boy – as if he were one of her precious porcelain dolls. Grasping his hand firmly she waited for him to slide off the hay before she pulled him slightly behind her. "Where and when shall we rendezvous?" She inquired, pronouncing the silent 'z' with a preadolescent slip of the tongue.

The woman pursed her lips in what must have been a smile, and looked between Harry and her husband. "How,er, thoughtful of you..." She stretched out, as if she'd been hoping Hermione's request had been one of total adoption. "The entrance?" She looked to the man for confirmation and he scowlingly nodded his head. "At six."

"Thank you," Hermione curtsied again, and then was tugged impatiently away by Harry, who couldn't seem to get away from the strangely-acting family fast enough. Her shorter legs caught up with his when he realized that she was having difficulty keeping pace with him and slowed down.

They walked side by side and hand in hand, the blue balloon drifting behind them. Hermione found her mother and father in the crowd in front of the lemonade stand as they'd promised, and her cheeks reddened at the proud looks they gave her. Averting her gaze to Harry, she gave a small gasp. Above the hand that intertwined with hers, a small bow of string was tied about the wrist as she had done.

"Um...," Hermione scrunched up her nose. "Would you like to ride the ferris wheel?"

A expression of utter joy lined his face, and though his glasses were hanging askew off his face he gave a 'whoop' and tackled her with a hug.

* * *

Twenty-four year old Hermione sat up straight in bed, head pounding as if she had indeed been bodily thrown to the floor and toes curling beneath the silk sheets still feeling the confines of sweaty paten-leather. The lamp beside her flared to life. Panting heavily, thinking that would restore her consciousness to full wakefulness, her still-occupied mind directed her gaze to the picture sitting on the mantel of her bedroom fireplace. 

It had been taken at her "wedding". Harry had flung her over his shoulder, the customary insanely-poofy white dress forced upon her by Ginny taking up nearly the entire background of the picture as she kicked her legs in protest within the wizarding photo. They were both laughing and kept smiling at one another, sunlight highlighting their hair.

"Hmmnn...what's the matter, love?"

Hermione's breath hitched in surprise and she processed it enough to realize she'd been continuing to pant. Breathing normally, she tucked frizzed curls behind her ear and looked down at her husband as he rolled off his stomach and onto his side.

"You alright?" He asked in concern, placing a hand gently along her cheek.

Hermione smiled winningly, and laid her hand over his, moving it to her lips to kiss the soft flesh of his palm. "It was nothing, Draco. Just a dream..."

"About?" He inquired, lifting up the sheets so she could slide back down into her bed.

"Just imagining what might have happened if Harry hadn't gone missing before the final battle," she murmured, taking comfort in the constant warmth of Draco's body that contrasted deeply with the pale blond of his hair the icy blue of his eyes.

"Eh?" He grunted, still half-asleep.

"Nevermind," she murmured, kissing his parted lips. "Let's just go back to sleep."

She reached out to extinguish the bedside lamp, and the last thing she saw before the darkness was the laughing face of the husband in the pretend wedding photo – the one Ron had taken of their Seventh-Year Halloween costumes – as he lifted her over his shoulder and dropped a kiss into her hair. They'd both been eighteen then.

_Goodnight, Harry...wherever you are._


	5. Supers

**Completed: **3/20/05 9:56 PM

**Posted: **3/24/05 9:29 PM

A/N: THIS, good people, is without a doubt a HAPPY installment to GoL. Ha HA!

* * *

"How are Neville and the kids?"

Ginny Longbottom smiled at her long-time friend as she dragged another breadstick through her pasta. "Great. Trey has a new girlfriend now; _Mindy_ –"

"He's only eight!"

"—and Quent just started peewee Quidditch last week."

Hermione smiled. "Any word on if the next one will be a girl?"

In the way all pregnant mothers had, Ginny's hand strayed down to her stomach at this comment. Though the life inside was only two months old, she rubbed her palm adoringly across the small bulge beneath her t-shirt. "Well, I do seem to be carrying on the Weasley tradition of all boys," she snorted, showing a bit of her old school fieriness. "But, you know Neville and I like to be surprised."

Sipping at her glass of wine, Hermione beamed uncontrollably at the redhead. She was so glad that Ginny had found happiness during the war that had now gone underground; even if it was in the clumsy, but sweet Neville Longbottom.

"And what about you?" Ginny asked, waiting for her to swallow her drink before expecting an answer.

Hermione chose to ignore the insinuation. "About me what?"

A huff of exasperation from Ginny, though she didn't stop eating long enough to give her a properly annoyed look. After all, she was feeding not only her own bottomless pit of a stomach, but apparently the five stomachs of her unborn child as well. "Look...I know you're still recovering from the accident at...well, you-know-what, but once you're alright again...why not start a family?"

It was the brunette's turn to heave an exasperated sigh. Pinching the bridge of her nose between her forefinger and thumb, she relented to having to explain the whole thing once again to Ginny. Sometimes she wondered if the pregnancies stunted her memory – or maybe just increased her stubbornness. "We've been through this, Ginny. I'm just not the..."family-making" type," Hermione said with air quotes.

"Balderdash, you'd be a wonderful mother – kind, passionate, level-headed, and you'd probably have read every book on the subject before doing anything rash."

"Ha. Ha." Hermione said dryly.

"Besides, it's like you're already married anyway. You know everyone automatically assumes that," she passed on in a conspiratorially hushed air.

"We're _not_ married."

"_I_ know that!" Ginny irritation was visible in the lines that were creasing across her forehead. Hermione noted that always seemed to happen when they got into a "discussion" like this. "I'm just saying – why not make it official?"

"You're not my mother, Gins," said Hermione. "And trust me, I get enough of this from her as it is; can't you just be on _my_ side for this?"

She should have known how ineffectual her pleading was going to be. "You love each other, Hermione."

"Of course we do," she snapped, a bit irritably. "I wouldn't still be in this if we didn't. This just isn't the time for such things Ginny. Harry and I are in the forefront of the war—"

"But lately things have been so much safer with the appearance of that group – the Crusaders. They're like the heroes in the comic books you told me about," Ginny exclaimed.

Hermione conceded the rise in safety to her with a nod. "They certainly are mysterious."

"The point _is_ – Neville and I managed; so could you!" Ginny said with warm belief.

Hermione's voice softened. "But your jobs in the Order are very different than ours," Hermione put as kindly as she could. "Harry and I do what we do, knowing that because of our efforts our friends are able to do the things they want...like start a family."

Her words had subdued the younger woman, to the point where she was no longer even eating. "And I am beyond grateful for everything that you've done, Hermione. I just wish you could experience what I have..." She said quietly. "It's a wonderful feeling."

Hermione's half-hearted smile twitched at the corners. She and Harry hadn't talked about starting a family – there just hadn't been the time. Truth be told, she was happy with where their relationship was as of now; it was all the talk of Ginny's desires for her that made her smile droop.

"How's Harry doing after the 'accident'?" She inquired. "George flooed me that his eyes were fully healed."

"Yes, Madame Pomfrey did a wonderful job," Hermione sipped at her wine again. "He's still a bit sensitive to light, but the bandages are off. He should be fully recovered in a few days."

"That's wonderful news; and your wrist? It's not still giving you pains is it?"

Hermione's fingers went reflexively to her forearm, tracing the raised line along it. The scar was pale now, not nearly the angry red it had been at the first, but it coiled neatly across her wrist and down the soft flesh of her forearm, nearly to her elbow. Some scars not even magic could heal. "A few ghost tremors now and then, but for the most part..." She shrugged.

**BZZ! BZZ! BZZZZZ!**

Hermione jumped, and her hand flew to her waist. Unclipping the pager from her waistband, she turned it over and read the familiar numbers. She blanched.

"What? Is it the hospital?" Ginny guessed, trying to peer curiously over the café table.

"Oh, uhm, yeah..." Hermione stammered. "One of my patients is asking for me, I really have to go."

"O-Of course!"

Hermione pushed back with a rattle of the table and was out the door. As she walked, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number stored in her mind, but not in her phone. She listened anxiously to the frazzling ring tone in her ear and with a shrug of her shoulder, dislodged her wand from its holster on her arm; it slid out from beneath the cuff of her blouse.

"_Please state your name and identification code."_

The connection was terrible, the animatronic voice crackling distortedly.

"Hermione Jane Granger. Circe-Tango-Nine."

"_Stand by."_

Hermione cursed as the sunglasses she was struggling to pull out of her blazer pocket fell from her fumbling fingers and she had to chase them across the cobblestones while trying to keep the cell phone cradled in her shoulder. She slipped on the dark inconspicuous shades and resumed her fast pace down the busy streets of downtown London in midday.

"_Chronos?"_

Hermione darted into the nearest alleyway, and gave the human voice on the other line a response other than her ragged breathing.

"You rang, Phantasm?" Hermione murmured low, not trusting that there weren't ears in the walls of the alley.

"_HQ just called in an assault on the Ministry's bank branch outside of London. Aurors have already been dispatched."_

"I'm already in the city. I was having lunch with Ginny."

"_Oh really? How're the kids?"_

"Tonks..." Hermione sighed.

"_Right, sorry. Seer wants you over there right away; we've already called in Zeus."_

"What exactly is our mission? Are we looking for prisoners or is this a simple protection operation?"

"_Just get all our boys back to the Ministry safe."_

"Give me half a second and I'm there," Hermione swore, already casting the enchantment that would create her disguise.

"_Good luck, Chronos. Phantasm out."_

Saying goodbye to her nice skirt-suit, Hermione achieved the same effect as stepping out of a phone booth with just a wave of her wand. Dark brown leather shorts were paired with a matching top that stopped just above her breasts. Black strings crisscrossed over her collar and shoulders and back behind her neck, sewing into the neckline of the brown leather. Unlike her clothes, the leather of her boots was the darkest black with a vinyl-like finish. They looked a killer to move in, but the heel was relatively low and they came up to her knees. The gloves that reached halfway up her biceps were a perfect match. A pendant hung from her neck, the worn stone depicting an etched hourglass.

As always, she felt ridiculous.

Pushing her sunglasses higher up the bridge of her nose she took a deep breath. In less a second she'd increased the speed of her moving cells to above human capacity and was shooting out of the alley like a rocket; running so fast she was nothing more than a blur. To Hermione the world seemed as if it'd had just slowed down and in the span of a breath she was on the outskirts of London and putting on the brakes.

She held the back of her wrist to her mouth as all the dust and stone she'd worn away came up around her in a billowing brown cloud. Eyes darting surreptitiously behind her shades, she slowly crept around the side walkway her adrenaline and anticipation making her body literally **thrum!**.

The next building was the Ministry's bank outlet and she pressed her body up against it at the sound of shouting, and then tested the direction of the wind. Methodically and confidently she _slowed_ her cells this time; slower and slower until the chemical bonds that held them together dissolved and crumbled and her genetic make-up began to drift apart. Her arm disappeared. Proud that her practice had paid off, Hermione smiled and in the blink of an eye she'd completely disappeared.

Well, not "disappeared" in the conventional sense of the word. She'd all but stopped time within her body and regressed herself to nothing more than a cloud of floating particles; imperceptible to the naked eye, an almost invisible shimmer in the sky. The downside to this was that without a solid bodily organization she didn't control where she went.

The wind picked up, and so did Hermione. She was pushed upwards into the sky and blown straight over the Ministry building. Aurors and Death Eaters were dueling in the streets and on the roof top; everyone else had deserted – she could see their curiously frightened faces peering out of draperies from the apartment complex across the street.

Suddenly, contrary to the sunshiny June day, the skies opened up and a bolt of lightening shot down and struck a Death Eater on the street dead where he stood. Cheers erupted from the hiding observers and the Aurors showed immense relief. The Death Eaters, however, began to shout.

"Damnit! They've called in the Crusaders!"

Hermione drifted over the fire escape and took the chance to quickly pull her cells back into line and matched their original velocity. She reappeared just off to the side of the metal construction and grabbed a hold of the railing as she fell.

"There's one of 'em!"

With a grunt of exertion, Hermione swung herself off and flipped backwards just as a green burst of magic hit the fire escape, crackling where her body had just been. She landed in a crouch and put a hand to her back with an "ow!" as she straightened. She was _not_ cracked out to be a superhero.

"Nice flip," Laughter roared above her as Harry came flying over her head.

"Don't even start," she shouted up, starting to run along beneath him, both dodging curses. "_You_ get to fly!"

"Can we argue about this later?" He bit out as he called down another burst of lightening. It cracked the pavement along the middle of the street and a Death Eater tumbled in, dragging an Auror in with him.

"CHRONOS!" Harry shouted.

Hermione flung up her hands and caught the falling Auror in one of her time bubbles; his descent slowing to one hundredth of the velocity it had been before.

"Ten seconds! Zeus GO!"

Harry didn't need telling twice and was already rocketing towards the slowing falling Auror before she'd even gotten the second word out. As he performed his typical daring rescue, Hermione was on cover duty. She dodged the spells aimed at her with quick bursts of inhuman speed and caught the spells directed at Harry in bubbles of time; magic wouldn't stop until it came into contact with something, so while her powers didn't stop the spells, they gave her enough time to put something else in their path other than Harry.

A manhole cover went into one and the metal exploded in a shower of sparks and shrapnel that rained down over the street. She ducked to shield against it, but the shots never hit. The hair was standing up on the back of her neck. Hermione glanced up to see Harry standing on the other side of the ravine he'd created, directing the manhole shards towards a lamp post where they instantly stuck; he'd pumped enough electricity through the air to magnetize.

Then he turned invisible; reappearing again a second later only a few steps away. His invisibility only lasted as long as lightening could flash, but it made for a disorienting sight when he repeated the action, like a strobe light. He went to work on one of the Death Eaters by the bank's doors, and Hermione moved to follow when she was grabbed roughly from behind.

Her molecules whirled to a frenzied speed and her struggles were at an unfathomably high-pace, but the gutsy Death Eater maintained his iron grip. She tried to time-bubble her assailant, but her hands were clamped down at her sides, rendering her powerless.

"Say goodbye Crusader Kitten," sneered a woman's voice, and Hermione's head snapped up as the second Death Eater, standing less than a dozen paces in front of her, cast the Killing Curse.

Hermione screamed, as if it would help, and never before had she had this little time. Then her cells snapped apart and she was billowed in a shapeless cloud into the sky. The Death Eater behind her was not so lucky and he crumpled lifelessly to the cobblestones as the spell intended for her hit him squarely in the chest.

The woman shrieked in rage and began casting off spells randomly into the sky. Hermione, though, was already being blown to the other side of the parking lot. She reformed over Harry's duel and fell the ten feet straight onto the Death Eater. They landed in a tangled heap of limbs together, where a disoriented Hermione scraped her elbow on the pavement – which was better than the Death Eater faired, as she was fairly certain the loud **crack!** she'd heard had been his head hitting the ground.

"_Graceful_," she heard Harry pant. Slowing sitting up on top of the groaning baddie, she managed a glare just for him, though her head was pounding. He'd sustained a few scrapes and bruises of his own, but none of it was too terribly bad and Pomfrey would be able to take care of it.

"Shove it," growled Hermione, as she sent an elbow into the Death Eater's chest as he tried to get up. "Just for that you get to finish the rest of 'em. I'll go secure the bank."

"Ginny's been hassling you again." Harry laughed, brushing his bangs back from the headband that obscured his tell-tale scar. Even with his sunglasses on she could tell those green eyes of his were sparkling with as much amusement as his mouth was. He got up, dusting off his black leather coat, but didn't bother helping her up.

"Don't take too long," he said. "I think I might have left the oven going."

Hermione's jaw dropped. "You are _so_ going to be paying if you blow up our house!"

She took a swing at him, but he just jumped into the air and flew off; laughing all the way. He truly was hopeless she thought to herself and shook her head. Climbing off the unconscious Death Eater in a far less graceful manner than she'd fell upon him, she gave Harry a little help by time-bubbling the Death Eater charging at his back before running into the bank to make sure none of the bad guys had gotten through.

* * *

Half an hour later, when the Ministry's clean up crew had come and gone, the press had taken enough photos to feed a third world country, and each Auror was safely back with their family, Hermione and Harry were sitting on the fire escape of the building, legs dangling.

"You know if it wasn't for that accident at Grimmauld, I'd still be eating lunch with Ginny and talking about..._normal things_," Hermione sighed.

Harry smiled at her poorly masked petulance and threw an arm over her shoulder. "You shouldn't be stuffing your face with all those breadsticks anyway," he teased. "Gotta keep fit for saving the world."

"I feel _ridiculous_ doing this," she admitted. She folded her arms over the railing and rested her chin on them.

"But you look hot when you do."

She elbowed him, cutting an 'oof!' into his laughter. "The costume's the worst part," she groused. She gestured to his white tank top and black slacks. "At least you get normal clothes."

"Well...I don't _usually_ wear a leather trenchcoat..." he said softly, picking at the ebony material of his jacket.

She elbowed him again, but this time she had a smile on her face trying to contain her own laughter. "Why do I put up with you?"

His fingers gently tilted her face to the sky and when he pressed his lips to hers a jolt of electricity that had nothing to do with any powers shot straight through her body and down to her toes curling in her vinyl boots. He kissed her as if he were drinking her in; a condemned man and his last supper. Their tongues met, dueling as familiar sparring partners and causing hearts to race. When Hermione finally pulled away she had the mint aroma of his mouthwash on her breath.

"Oh yeah..." she murmured, knowing there was a silly smile on her face. She'd given up on the inevitably of feeling lovesick where Harry was concerned.

He grinned – that adorable, kissable, lopsided grin – and lowered his head to kiss her again.

"Oh my god! Did you see that!" A little girl shrieked to another.

"Zeus and Chronos just _totally_ made out!"

Harry gaped at the two girls, who'd apparently been taking their dollies out for a summer walk in their stroller, and for once couldn't think of anything to say. Hermione, chuckling behind her gloves at the hilarity of it, came to his rescue.

"That's right," she called down to the girls; who looked as though they'd faint having _the_ Chronos talking to them. "But don't tell anyone alright? It'll be our little secret."

Hermione winked and put a gloved finger to her lips. "Okay?" The two girls mirrored her action, nodding emphatically, before squealing loudly and taking off running down the walkway, stroller bounding out of control behind them.

"You know they're going to tell everyone they've ever met, don't you?" Harry told her with a shake of his head.

But Hermione didn't care, running her fingers through his hair. "That's alright," she said with a ghost of a smile. "Maybe we'll finally beat out that 'Harry and Hermione' couple everyone keeps talking about..."

Harry laughed loudly at this, his unmanageable hair falling into his eyes, and Hermione couldn't resist the urge to kiss him again. And again. And again.


	6. Downpour

**Completed: **3/17/05 4:32 PM

**Posted: **3/25/05 7:27

A/N: Okay is this not fluff! I think so... Maybe not sugar-sweet-happy fluff, but fluff nonetheless. I actually thought this addition was a sweet interaction between the two. 'Sides I had to write this when _I_ got to my room and it was hurricane-ing out – I work with what I'm given.

* * *

"So much for the perfect vacation."

They were finally in Cozumel – the most beautiful island in the Gulf, with its beaches of pristine white sand and its gleaming turquoise waters stretching out into the cloudless sky...

And it was _raining_.

Harry was devastated at the rotten turn of events and it showed in the slump of his shoulders as he carelessly dropped the dripping suitcases onto the bed and effectively ruining the comforter. He and Hermione had _finally_ gotten the vacation they'd wanted (and needed); though, granted, it was only for three days, but that made this sudden downpour all the more depressing. A third of their vacation was now going to be spent in the confines of their smoke-permeated hotel room.

"I hate rain," he grumbled flopping wetly down upon the bed without care and stubbornly putting his back to the balcony.

He was then shocked and a little disgruntled when Hermione came in laughing. Her hair, that had been painstakingly and time-consumingly styled into perfect doll-like ringlets (especially for the occasion) was now a mess. It clung to her rouged cheeks and forehead and strands were caught in the rain-sticky lines of her lashes. Whatever wasn't matted down had resisted its styling in the Mexican humidity and now stuck out in ever direction; bushy and dripping.

"You're being silly over nothing, Harry." Her laughter was brash and uninhibited; one of the things he liked about her.

Much to his dismay and with a total disregard for his petulant tantrum, the young woman strode to the balcony – sandals squelching wetly across the tile – and flung open the sliding glass doors. Rain immediately poured in, splattering across the floor, and bringing with it a torrent of wind.

"You're upset over nothing," she insisted, and leaned out over the railing, the buffeting palm trees so close she could touch them if she tried. "Come see! It's beautiful."

"But it's raining!" He said morosely – and he'd boasted to Ron of coming back all bronzed and lean.

She laughed again, shoulders cocooned in soaked cotton shaking with the force of her mirth. Rain snaked down the side of her nose and along her ears, filling the indent of her mouth with beaded droplets and dangling them off her chin so that whenever she spoke she tasted the rain and shook it loose upon the drenched balcony where a few more drops made little difference.

"Perhaps I like being wet," she told him.

Harry gave her an odd look, having grudgingly rolled onto his side to watch her.

"Who cares if it's raining," she said in answer to the face. "We're here, _finally_ getting a break, and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. But most importantly, I want to spend this vacation with you..."

Harry was already standing by the time she offered out her hand, and he made short work of locking their fingers together even as the rain threatened to blind him; flattening his hair down over his glasses.

"See?" Hermione said, pulling him down onto the lounge chair beside her. "A little water never hurt anyone."

"Well, it's not 'a _little_' water," Harry started sarcastically. "But you're right, and I want to spend every moment I can with you."

Hermione smiled at his chivalrous gesture; lifting their joined hands to place a kiss on the back of her palm, and her giggling slightly as his lips slipped across the rain water beaded on her skin. She pulled his arms about her, not for warmth, for the rain and the wind made clammy both their skins, but for the comfort only gained through such an intimate embrace. Together they sat, watching the rain-soaked island ride out the storm – they too sympathizing and joining the island, letting the weather do with them what it would – and Hermione began to murmur words only her lover could hear before the wind swept them away.

"The rain has a beauty all its own," she explained. "It allows the sun to warm whatever it may touch with its reach and turn all beneath a golden sparkle; and for its leniency, humans and animals alike now see only the beauty in the light of that star. They look upon the storm as the anti-sun, a terrible thing that has come to wash away the shine and blot out the glow."

Her voice was rhythmic and soothing in its passion. It rose and fell with the pattering of the rain and the swell of the gusts, lulling Harry into a near tranquil state. The pads of his fingers traced idle pictures along the bare, goosepimpled flesh of her arms making her shiver under the caresses.

"_Yo_u aren't sad this tempest has been bloody loosed upon our god-given day of rest," he pointed out.

"That is because, when the gale rages and the thunder claps and the downpour pounds, I _listen_. It is a song, like that of a sunny day, but with a faster, staccato rhythm – the kind that makes your stomach twist and your feet ache to dance."

And as he listened to Hermione speak, he _did_ listen. And he heard the music. He would wait for her to finish, and when there were no more wise words for her to impart he would make sure they danced together. For now, he pressed a kiss to her flesh – where the roots of her hair met the skin of her neck – lips landing purposefully atop the steadily pulsing vein just below the surface. The steady motion made his mouth vibrate and tingle; even her blood was flowing to the beat of the storm.

"See how alive the fronds of the palm tree look? The rain makes them gleam and quenches their thirst after baking so long in the sun. They are the color of your eyes," she laughed and her body thrummed against his. "

"The sand that was so blinding in the glare is now a familiar tan; so much easier upon the eyes. It reminds me of the spiral of cream into my coffee, or the color of your skin after my kisses." As if to prove herself, she tilted her head back, only managing to kiss the scruffy underside of his jaw.

"And what of the ocean, love?"

Hermione looked out across the beach and through the near heart-shaped hole in the palm foliage. "I admit that the glittering turquoise of the sea in the sunlight never ceases to be beautiful in my mind, but there is also a darker radiance in the tumultuous waters as we see them now."

They had carried the pattern this far, so Harry had to ask. "And what analogy do you have for this one?"

Hermione was quiet for a long time in his arms. The wind carried away each breath, so only the solid beating of her heart betrayed that she was not made of stone. "I think..." she said slowly; words a faint whisper. "If we each truly have our own 'auras'...that yours would be like this ocean, always caught in the heart of a squall."

Harry was shocked. Hermione had never been one to believe in such trivialities of fancy; such divination ideals. She'd always been the level-headed, if passionate, one who saw things exactly as they were. Not even magic was a mystery to her; she'd broken it down to its component and discovered the scientific fathoms that caused it to exist. If she was now defecting from her usual mannerisms it was something that demanded automatic and total attention. He urged her to continue.

"You can still see the bright turquoise," she started again, at his urging, but hesitant. "But it's a bit darker now, overcast by the gray clouds hanging ominously above and the stain of the darker waters farther out spreading through it. I worry about the War's affect on you more than the thing itself," her voice was painfully soft. "The waters are disturbed, choppy, and unsettled. See how the waves break so high upon the shore?"

She pointed out to where the white-capped waters were encroaching upon the rain-laden sand, but Harry's eyes were fixed on her.

"You're reaching," she whispered. "_Always reaching_...trying to gain just one more foot of land; to get higher up the beach. I believe that your ocean will never regain its sun-sparkling color until this War is seen to its end. I worry how heavy the rain weighs down your heart..."

Harry tightened his grip around her and she reciprocated in kind. It was rare for her to speak so metaphorically, but the passion in her words was the same. Her worry and her fear for him were very real. "I thought you liked the rain..." said he.

"It is beautiful to me because I see you in it, and you are beautiful." Her simply stated words brought a smile to Harry's face.

"I thought it was the man's job to do the complimenting," he teased lightly, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.

It worked and he succeeded in producing another valuable peal of laughter from his lover. Hermione wrapped her arms around one of his and kissed his elbow. The rain had stopped, but the wind was still as strong as ever and so Harry had to move his lips to her ear to speak.

"I think you're right about me," he murmured. "But there's something you've forgotten."

Hermione tilted her head up at him, looking adorably like an inquiring avian. He allowed her to shift in the chair so that she was sitting curled between his knees looking up at him. He leaned forward, brushing his cheek along hers in the course of moving his lips close to her ear. Raindrops caught in her eyelashes hit his cheeks as she blinked and the soft lines fluttered across his skin.

"When I'm with you," he whispered. "My ocean has its sunshine..."


	7. Lay Your Head Down

**Completed: **8/21/05 3:11 PM  
**Posted: **8/21/05 3:25 PM

A/N: Aha! You thought my angsting days were over. Written a bit oddly – kinda like Black Dresses. Basically the required "final battle" romance-ish scene.

* * *

Blood. The ground reeked of it – sickly and metallic, like rusting copper pennies. Crimson-stained grass was obscured by the autumn leaves being blown out of the tall trees across the grounds; a fierce wind echoing the tortured cries. The screaming was as thick as the stench.

They looked like little dolls, the dead – porcelain faces sucked clear of all life and color by a single chartreuse blast. No matter the strength of the blood-pennies' odor, most of them were barely injured past a few scrapes and bruises, appearing as though they'd simply fallen and were simply unwilling or unable to get back to their feet. A monochromatic ending.

Over the mounds of the dead and past the burning hut, the black-on-black bodies aren't really that different. No masks, no shadowed cloaks and everyone is alike. Faces blur and the line that differs the two sides dies along with them.

Now, from a dying, spell-scorched pumpkin patch a doll is dragging itself; robes black, just like all the others. It's a girl, her once slender hands streaked with blood and one swollen tearing up the earth; digging, clawing, dragging, pulling. She is half-buried beneath corpses and churned earth covering her body in blood, entrails, and rich brown silt. A rust-colored leaf sticks to her tattered back.

People are still screaming, charging, fighting around her, but no one stops to help those too late to save, and the grass is stained in a smear behind her as her desperate pull-drag aggravates her numerous injuries. There is something almost stubborn to her desperation – each labored breath, each flushing expulsion of blood and fluids neither deterring her progress nor slackening her pace. And when any other mortal being would have expired from such wounds and such stubborn damaging, death seemed to be waiting just off to the side, patiently shouldering his scythe and pausing for her to get to this place that she was willing to kill herself to make it to before he'd let the blade drop across her neck.

Away she pulled herself. Away from the battle, away from the still bodies of friends and enemies all alike, and away from it all. The grass here was still green and crisp and smelling freshly cut, and as if sensing such purity, her gaping, spewing wounds stopped, held their breath and it was like she no longer had the blood left to bleed. There was no blasted earth, splintered tree-bark, or noxious fumes clouding the air and brightly lit wildflowers still poked their petal-ed heads above the grass un-trampled.

And here she collapsed.

Grass rustled, the wind sighed its saccharine lament and so very far off in the distance a bird twittered. A hand reached out and laid itself in her own. It's owner whispered to her in a halting, breaking voice.

"Her-my-nee?"

Her body was truly empty for as she shuddered out cries, a scant few tears welled up in her battered eyes and then no more. "I-It's me, Harry. I'm here."

He sobbed in a shuddering, immeasurable release, and Hermione, laying beside her love, squeezed his hand as tightly as she was able. For his part, great crocodile tears poured from the corners of his green apple eyes and he cried enough tears for them both, giving all the strength he had into squeezing back.

"_I knew you'd find me_," he whispered through saline-slicked lips, and Hermione cried, choked, squeezed, and loved him for all she was worth.

They needed each other and Harry, grabbing a great fistful of grass with his free hand, managed to tug and rock and eventually roll himself across the small gap of sweet grass that separated them and he fell against her, their joined hands crushed between their bodies. They breathed in heavy, staccato rhythm, off-pace with one another, and their chests crashed into one another's, jarring the precious air from their mouths and lungs, but still a desperate, end-of-the-world reminder that they were here, together.

"I will always come for you," she told him, lips pressed to the ash-gray skin of his throat. Cold skin, lips tingling; "My place is with you. Forever."

He cried into her hair. It was bittersweet, lamentably poetic and just as finite as death could make it. Already his shadow was falling over the battle they could no longer see and licked at the edge of their sun-struck meadow that had somehow survived the carnage.

"If only I could see you."

It was choked into her knotted curls; one last selfish, wanting, confession of a wish. The curse – gray, electric, exploding – that had blasted him out so far had been preceded by the one that had taken his sight; burning, smoking, screaming, _scalding out his vision_. Sightless jade cried pink streams into her hair, saline diluting the thick crimson of the blood seeping from the corners. His mother's eyes were dead.

Hermione squeezed his hand unable to speak; unable to tell him he was better off blind, unable to sooth his broken soul, unable to even breath a whispered word of love through her soft, erratic gasps for life. But Harry squeezed back, without judgment or grudge at her silence, and the slowing rise and fall of his chest as his skin died to gray was like a fiery knife in her gut; twisting, wrenching, cutting her open to find that last sustaining pocket of blood.

The wind picked up, almost as if to try and ease their labored breaths by filling their gaping mouths with billows of air, flavored by the sharp tang of earth and the bite of a coming winter. Crisp, crinkly leaves were plucked from their tenuous hold on thin branches, scooped from their hollowed hibernation in the roots of trees and blown down across the meadow in cart-wheeling, tumbling cacophony. The leaves rolled over their joined bodies like brief caresses, flew above them in dizzying spirals, and caught in their hair and tattered clothes. They clung to them as if they were trying to pull them up and away into the air along with them, to die along with them; autumn sinking into a frozen winter.

"I'm so tired."

"I know." She kissed the hollow of his throat with shaking lips. "Sleep now."

"I'll dream of you," he said, but they both knew he wouldn't. There was no time. "And I'll see your beautiful face again...and _I'll_ be with you..."

"Good," she whispered, her voice breaking.

He was like a block of ice against her own body – her legs trembling, intertwined with his – and his voice was equally cold and weighted as though he were speaking through a thick fog, uncertainty of who was on the other side making his voice tremulous.

"Is it finished?" was what he asked.

"It's over" was what she said.

The sun was going down, winter was coming, and it was over. As sure as the breath was dying in their lungs, as sure as the decaying autumn leaves gathered around them encouragingly, it was over. They'd failed, they'd succeeded – none of it mattered anymore. They two, together, had been fighting forever, for their lives, _for eternity_. No more.

Their souls were old, aged past their boundaries; as crinkled and brittle as the autumn leaves now becoming their coffin. War and pestilence, horror and cruelty, torture and trials had weathered the untangible, invisible energy, and this was just the moment where their two bodies finally caught up with their dying spirits. A tragedy, a loss, a _blessing_.

"I love you."

It didn't matter who said, who didn't say it. It was unsayable, it was implied, it was known. They were irrevocably bound to one another; he to her, she to him, they two together. Their love ran deeper than could be measured, wider than could be imagined, and permeated ever infinitesimal speck of the universe and beyond; it did not need to be vocalized aloud because it simply _was_. But simply because it didn't need to be told, doesn't mean it can't be – and they both wanted it, probably both needed it.

Death would not wait much longer for Hermione Granger. Already the soul-stealing scythe was becoming hot in his hands and he was checking the sinking sun with the anxiety of a child, his only want in life to take those whose time had come and add their souls to his weathered collection. His icy hand was settling over them both, paralyzing, freezing, sucking, coaxing – a dementor's kiss of their very life force.

"It's _over_."

The words were barely distinguishable, so lightly wheezed out onto the tumultuous winds, but the voice was all that needed to be heard anyway. It was shocked, as though it never could have imagined such a thing _ever_ – something improbable, impossible even. Pigs flying, hell freezing over, a thirtieth day to February kind of impossible.

"It's really over."

And they were at peace; lying together, dying together in a tiny scrap of field that had escaped the war. The exhaustive battle of their lives was now dwindling to a premature halt, but only in the eyes of those who had no understanding of the weight those young bodies had carried in so short a time. Like Atlas with the world upon his shoulders. No one had ever asked if they might like to take a break from holding up the battle, or offered to take their place if only so that they might finally stretch their arms or for once just stand up perfectly straight, unencumbered.

Tangled together, they looked more like a pair of lovers reposing together on a remote hillside in the country, the hypnotic lull of the setting sun persuading them into a calm sleep. The leaves were caught all around them and Death was hovering over them. Hermione, slicked in blood, was the dying heat of autumn, and Harry, with his cursed stone-gray complexion, was the ice of approaching winter, capturing the devoted fall in his strong arms and bringing it into numbness and oblivion.

Hermione squeezed his hand and the barely-there touch was returned with equal strength – all they had left, given to each other.

Harry closed his eyes first; she dimly felt the soft caress of his lashes through her blood-stuck hair, and then Hermione too let her eyes drift gratefully shut, her chest shuddering with her breaths and rising a little less each time. It was cold, it was hot; dark, and light. It was everything and nothing and it was over, so none of it mattered anyway. It felt so _good_ to just close their eyes, close their thoughts, _let go_.

The first shining curve of the sun touched the horizon and their joined breaths stopped in poetic harmony. The scythe came down – _once, twice_ – and it was done and Death had come and gone from the tiny little field where the two lovers lay embracing.

It was like they'd fallen into a long sleep that no one would be able to wake them from, and even if they tried it was useless. No matter their appearance, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were gone. And if only someone had taken the world off of their shoulders, just once, their friends might have known that they _didn't_ want to wake up. Not any more.

* * *

Because deep in the cell of their hearts, they were glad to go...

* * *


End file.
